HDD Failure

[Twinreaper]

Ok, so I don't usually ask for help with any type of pc issue except on hardware or pc forums; but I trust the information and advice of my good friends here over any professional business or other forum site. I had an EZQuest external HDD device with a 120 gig Western Digital HDD that I used to use on my old Dell Inspiron Laptop. Long story short, the External case stopped working from normal wear and tear. This posed quite a problem since I recently discovered that all my family photos that I burned to DVD with the laptop are corrupt. All data recovery apps I used could not read anything from them. The external HDD has about 9 years of memories on it. So I recently went to the local pc store and picked up a new enclosure with USB connectivity. So I hooked up the HDD and found that the 120/220v power supply was not enough to power the HDD for some odd reason.(maybe a lemon enclosure). So I hooked it up to the desktop power supply, and ran the connection thru the usb interface on the case. The desktop quickly installed it as a mass storege device, but it does not show the HDD in any explorer window. Device manager shows the hdd, and under the properties for it it shows that the device is working properly. So I downloaded again, numerous recovery apps and the Western Digital HDD tools from their website. Heres where things get interesting. The recovery software detects the drive and loads it fine, except that it reports that the drive is a 2tb drive?!? Remember from the begining of the post, it's a 120 gig not a 2tb. Problem #1. Then as it tries to scan the HDD it runs into a read error at every sector, and reports that the file system is unknown. Problem #2. So in a last ditch effort I ran the Western Digital tools and it tells me that it needs to install the proper drivers for the HDD to work. Finally I think all is good when it tells me this..."The HDD you are installing drivers for needs to be formatted" SHIT!!!!!!!!! Problem#3! Now I'm no computer god, but I thought my best bet for recovery would be to take it to a pc shop and have them try to recover all my HDD data through a specialty service. But, I realize that I could also just let the HDD be reformatted, and try to recover the data after that, hoping that with a sound file structure I can get something. What I need to know from you guys is....should I risk sending it to a pc shop, or would it be better to do it myself? I will be totally bummed to lose all of my kids pictures from 9 years ago! (infants to now, + vacations) Not to mention all my apps, music and 3d models. What would you guys do if this happened to you?

PS: I know you will have some usefull trick up you'r sleeve Grim!

[Ogrish]

Damn dude thats a bummer, my wife had a simelar problem, but it was 4 gig memory card.
All our anniversary pics and several Bdays and other stuff gone.
We D/L many different apps to recover, but no luck then we sent it to a specialty pc store that garuntied us Jack shit, and thats what we got. (I was told not to reformat)

In the end we lost all.
Hope you have better luck.

[Eaton]

My old laptop's hard-drive failed and I lost a ton of modding files. I actually stopped for a few months to get a new laptop and build everything back up. I hope you figure this out.

[Dragonfire]

Now u said when the hdd is connected and powered, it is recognized by the pc (device manager), right? Have u tried to manually type in the hdd's path and see if explorer will come up with anything?

Whatever u do, DONT REFORMAT IT!!! YOU WILL LOOSE EVERYTHING!!!

PS: Ogrish, what kind of PC store reformats a hdd and expects there to be shit left on it!?

[OwnZ joO]

Now u said when the hdd is connected and powered, it is recognized by the pc (device manager), right? Have u tried to manually type in the hdd's path and see if explorer will come up with anything?

Whatever u do, DONT REFORMAT IT!!! YOU WILL LOOSE EVERYTHING!!!

PS: Ogrish, what kind of PC store reformats a hdd and expects there to be shit left on it!?

Formatting the drive does not delete everything. To actually completely delete everything you have to overwrite the data.

[Twinreaper]

DF, under device manager it does not assign a path for the drive. I'm assuming because it does not know what type of file system it is, it cant assign a logical path for it to be accessed. And from what I have been seeing, there is no way for me to assign one manually, unless you mean for me to edit the local_machine_keys manually in the registry to do so? Also, I forgot to mention this earlier, as I didn't think or realize this might be helpful until now; the HDD that came with this EZQuest External setup specifically has a sticker on the HDD indicating that it is for an EZQuest External Firewire Case. Does it matter that I'm trying to connect it with a USB style case instead? And more to the point, what should I try to recover this data? I'm really leaning towards reformat, then recovery. Thanks again for the quick replies guys! I knew I made the right choice by asking this here

PSS: Grim, you magnificent bastard!!!! I would like you to weigh in on this! PWEEEEZE!

[Grimdoomer]

See if you can open the drive in HexWorkshop. If you can, then you can dump most if not all the sectors to a bin file somewhere. But you will have a 120gig bin file floating around. Now you could format the HDD and put all the sectors back on. BUT if it doesn't work and something happens to that bin file, your fucked. If you get all the sectors back on and it appears "broken" again, I would suggest copying only the partition table and data sectors.

[Twinreaper]

Thanks Grim! As always, something I didn't think of. I'll give that a try and report back in what happens. I'm not 100% sure I will be able to though since my computer doesn't give the drive a path letter or show in any window other than device manager. I'm also guessing since noone has posted otherwise, that the original conection type via external case doesn't matter huh?

[Grimdoomer]

Thanks Grim! As always, something I didn't think of. I'll give that a try and report back in what happens. I'm not 100% sure I will be able to though since my computer doesn't give the drive a path letter or show in any window other than device manager. I'm also guessing since noone has posted otherwise, that the original conection type via external case doesn't matter huh?

It shouldn't. Last time I checked Firewire and USB use the same buss.

[Twinreaper]

Since I no longer have the funds at the moment for a new enclosure, I decided to try to atach it via slave on my ide0 channel. Turns out the computer starts reading the drive, but since the file stucture is unknown, it simply removes it after about20 seconds. During this 20 period, all OS operations sem to halt waiting for the HDD to respond, which completely nullifies any atempt to get the drive to register in a recovery app. I have tried booting directly into a recovery app, but it too seems to not be able to find the HDD. Now it seems my only recourse is to await my IRS refund check, and purchase an enclosure capable of housing and peoviding actual needed voltage to the HDD. When I get the neccessary component, I'll update you guys on my progress. Thank you everyone, for your help with this matter! LONG LIVE REMNANTMODS!!!

[Dragonfire]

Have u tried a different enclosure, i do know some older enclosures arent designed to hold more than a certain GB.

Ex. My roomate bought a 500GB hdd a few years ago, but couldnt use any of his enclosures bc they couldnt support that size, so he had to buy a new one.