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Thread: Recovering a HDD?

  1. #17
    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    The disk or volume fs isn't being mounted, so provided the kernel detects the physical disk, you can use dd to perform the imaging.
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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Quote Originally Posted by peterb View Post
    Next time it won't be a problem, because you will recover the data from your backup.
    Oh so very true - nothing like a data loss to make sure you always have backups in the future.
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    Chillie in here j.o.s.h.1408's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mikerr View Post
    Oh so very true - nothing like a data loss to make sure you always have backups in the future.
    Expensive to do so lol

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    Goron goron Kumagoro's Avatar
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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    using Linux might be okay but I think still probably not if not initialized.

    Although it was a couple of years ago now some friends of mine were doing ps3 repairs and they would often do hdd replacements. The hdds were not being recognised you couldn't format them on a ps3 Vista didn't want to know and my puppy boot disk couldn't format it either. Tried disk management in xp and it said it it needed initializing once done it was fine

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Had the same problem a few weeks ago, tried to recover all my stuff just just kept on getting errors just decided to chalk it up to experience!

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?



    damm

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    I'm also a bit late but I've found PhotoRec good for recovering files from damaged filesystems, it's a while since I've used it but IIRC it has an option to just recover anything possible from the disk, dumping it to another drive. It can be a nightmare to sort through the output but might be worth it for important files.

    But as peterb said, it's always best to dd an image of the disk and work on that, don't try to initialise (create a partition table), it's not necessary and you don't want to write to a disk you're trying to recover. The reason PS3 disks aren't recognised is because data (including partition table, etc) is encrypted in hardware before being written to the disk, so it just looks like random data to Windows. Something like fdisk would have no problems creating a new table.

    Recovery software can be useful if the error is realised soon enough, but it's not magic - if the data has been overwritten you have basically no chance of getting complete files back - that's essentially how HDD erase utilities work, but you might find a few smaller files/chunks of larger ones between newly written files but finding and recovering them would be far from simple on a modern (huge) HDD. Chance of recovery depends largely on how much has been written to the drive - if you only had a small mount of data at the beginning of the drive then installed Windows over it, it's not likely, but if for example you had important files near the end of the drive and/or only re-formatted the drive, chances are far better.

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kumagoro View Post
    using Linux might be okay but I think still probably not if not initialized.

    Although it was a couple of years ago now some friends of mine were doing ps3 repairs and they would often do hdd replacements. The hdds were not being recognised you couldn't format them on a ps3 Vista didn't want to know and my puppy boot disk couldn't format it either. Tried disk management in xp and it said it it needed initializing once done it was fine
    Initialisation is not necessary to do a raw read or raw write, as obviously the OS needs to write to the disk to initialise it If you can access an unitialised disk, you can use a raw read to get data off - this is way below file system level. Once the disk has been cloned, you can play with the cloned disk, safe in the knowledge that you can always re-clone from the original.

    Whether or not the data on the disk can be re-assembled into a meaningful or useful entity is another matter - but my original post on the subject was to outline first steps in trying to salvage data - but this case has gone beyond that stage.

    Applications like photo recover work at the file system level - but if the file system structure has been damaged, you need tools that access the disk directly, either mounted or unmounted.
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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    PhotoRec actually operates below the filesystem level BTW.

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    PhotoRec actually operates below the filesystem level BTW.
    Thank you - I think I was confusing it with another similar sounding app. It looks good, but again' if the disk's logical structure is badly damaged, I would still use it on a disk image (clone)
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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Oh definitely, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

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    Hi all. Some good news. I tried a application called easeUS and it managed to find and list my files.

    Trouble is the free version only allows us to recover 1gb so I tried it and it worked and managed to recover some files. I have ordered a new hdd and will buy pro version of this app and go from there

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Good news indeed! Glad to hear it, and fingers crossed.

    Now, about your backup regime....
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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    The old drive i will use it for backing up what i am dumping into the new drive and then when i get paid i will buy another hdd to back up others.

    One thing i noticed from that app is that only about 200gb worth of content was displayed and listed fine with there names and all intacked but i notice that the RAW files made up the rest and did not have there correct filenames

    Its better then losing it all permanently though so at least i have the actual files accessible now.

    my new HDD should arrive tomorrow from Scan and will recover all files from the old hdd and then reformat it once and for all.

    Thanks and this was a life lesson indeed, from now on, i will make regular backups. spending even just £60 on a hdd once in a whole for a 1TB.

    i have too much sensitive meaningful content now such as my pictures from my DSLR.

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Quote Originally Posted by BlackDwarf View Post
    If it's just the partition table that's been destroyed, you might be able to recover it using TestDisk

    Depending on what's been overwritten would depend on what you're able to recover.

    Good luck, it's a terrible feeling when you do something like that.
    Well my portable hdd is screwed . A first the hdd would freeze and crash my whole laptop but worked fine on other laptop but now when u try access the drive on another pc there is no contents there and only a simple short cut icon linked to the actual hdd and nothing happens when I click on it.

    Same happens in safe mode on my pc. I did a virus scan on it and it did detect a virus that I removed and since removing it I can't access contents of it.

    Also the laptop itself seems lie its ****ed as well as I can't view event logs as it crashes and tried to connect other ext hdd and would still crash the system

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    Re: Recovering a HDD?

    Try Recuva? It helped me last time one of my drives failed. (managed to recover the files I were after at least, didn't care about the rest).

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