[Discuss] Hard Drive Death

Tue Jan 14 17:19:57 PST 2014

Happy Ending!

I have managed to recover most of my data from my dead hard drive 
without resorting to drastic measures such as changing the control board 
from one drive to another. Following an Internet hint I bought a SATA to 
USB adapter so that I could plug my defective hard drive into a USB 
port. The drive to my surprise was recognised and two out of the three 
partitions could be mounted. The one that could not be mounted was the 
one containing all my important data but I was able to repair it with 
"fsck" with some forcing and ignoring bad sectors which means some data 
was lost but I have recovered 99% of my files!

Its interesting that the drive was not recognised by the BIOS but was by 
the USB adapter. Anyway my new hard drive should arrive on Thursday so I 
can migrate everything on to that since I don't have much faith now in 
my other 6 year old drives. I shall just use them for temporary backup 
and testing.

John

On 01/03/2014 10:05 AM, John Blomfield wrote:
> Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. I had already checked most 
> things but just to be sure I did it all again. My motherboard can 
> accommodate up to 6 SATA drives and I had 3 installed including the 
> dead one, so I was able to change cables and connections to 
> effectively eliminate the possibility of faulty motherboard, power 
> supply, connectors and cables by swapping good and dead drives around. 
> I have concluded that the problem is the HD controller board or drive 
> motor. I have recovered a lot of data from various backups and that 
> which is missing is now in the "nice to have" category and can be 
> re-created with some work and time. At the moment I don't think its 
> worth my spending more time or money on trying to recover the latter 
> from the dead drive. I hope I won't find something critical missing in 
> the future!
>
> My problem now is to decide how to reconfigure my desktop for the 
> future. Its now about 5 or more years old but is still fast enough for 
> my needs AMD Athlon 64 5200+ CPU, new graphics card and power supply 2 
> years ago. It has a high power consumption, is a bit noisy by modern 
> standards and I lust after a Zotac ZBOX mini or something similar with 
> SSDs. However I think I may migrate my system on a new 2.5" HD, use 
> the two old remaining 3.5" HD's for backup and set up some cron jobs 
> to avoid future problems. I already have two portable USB harddrives 
> that I use for my monthly backups. Perhaps I should make those weekly? 
> The logic behind the 2.5" drive is that I can then use it in any 
> future mini computer I might buy.
>
> John
>
>
> On 01/02/2014 03:16 PM, pw wrote:
>>
>> If the drive doesn't even ID in bios the possible problems can be:
>>
>> -Power supply
>> -HD controller board
>> -SATA cable
>> -SATA controller on the MOBO
>>
>> The best way to diagnose is to isolate each possibility separately 
>> and deduce through reduction.
>>
>> a.) Move the drive to a different machine and test it there.
>> b.) Check your power supply. Many HD issues are caused by failed PSU.
>> c.) Check your cables. Re-Seat ( unplug + replug ) SATA cables, 
>> including power, both ends.
>> d.) Check you MOBO/SATA. Move a working drive to the problematic SATA 
>> port. See if it fails. If it changes there is a MOBO problem.
>>
>> Swapping the controller on the back of the drive is possible only if
>> the boards come from matching drives from the  same factory run
>> within the same week/month. The HD part numbers need to match completely
>> as well as factory and date of manufacture. Use anti-static measures
>> while swapping boards. Be gentle and slow.
>>
>> DON'T crack the drive seal and try and move platters to a different
>> housing. This will kill your drive unless you have a 'clean-room'
>> , a way to recharge the 'atmospheric fluid' inside the drive, and
>> the ability to reseal the hermetics.
>>
>> If you have a similar (same) HD, that works, that was purchased at 
>> the same time, it would be better to buy 2 new hard drives now. Back 
>> up the
>> good one and swap it out. Then perform the brain surgery transferring
>> the on-board controller board to the failed drive. You will need to buy
>> new drive(s) anyway since they are both ageing at the same rate.
>> This means that the one that is still functioning will likely fail
>> soon as well and should be replaced.
>>
>> In general, if drives are older than 3-4 years, they should be replaced
>> as general routine maintenance.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 14-01-02 10:46 AM, John Blomfield wrote:
>>> On returning after a week away visiting for Christmas, I receive an
>>> unpleasant New Year surprise of a dead HD. That is the BIOS does not
>>> recognize the drive, nor does a live CD. In the rush to leave I had
>>> neglected my usual monthly backup so I have lost about 6 weeks of data,
>>> except for some critical stuff that I backup more regularly. However, I
>>> would like to recover the lost stuff if possible. The drive a WD 3.5"
>>> 250 GB appears not to be damaged physically in anyway and the control
>>> board is not showing signs of burning etc. The advice on the Internet
>>> runs from "easy to fix" to "don't even attempt it", when it comes to
>>> changing the control board, which is the most likely problem. I have 
>>> two
>>> other HD's that are identical to the dead one so in theory I could
>>> change a control board to attempt to recover some data. Some "advice"
>>> states its just a question of swapping boards and others came you also
>>> must "transfer the firmwear from the damaged board to the new board",
>>> since the data structure is unique. However, I don't want to do the
>>> latter as I might end up with two dead HDs!
>>>
>>> The lost data is not life and death stuff as I have the most critical
>>> stuff backed up - just means a bit of time recreating the data. My
>>> dilemma is will it take more time to recover the data from the dead HD
>>> than to recreate it?
>>>
>>> Has anyone ever attempted this or other solutions for recovering data.
>>>
>>> I guess this is the first time this has happened to me in the last 30
>>> years of PC computing - sagely advice on using RAID etc already noted
>>> and acknowledged. I shall no doubt review my future backup strategy to
>>> make sure my failing memory does not let me down again.
>>>
>>
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>
>

-- 
John Blomfield
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Old John B's Linux Notes http://www.oldjohnbslinux.wordpress.com