[SOLVED] Hard Drive Failed

[t4ketheshot]

Windows is on my C drive which is an SSD and is completely fine. My D drive, which had most of my programs and everything else was a spanned volume consisting of two 1TB HDD's. The first of those two HDD's seems to have failed, it is still detected in the bios, disk management, and in SeaTools but it fails the generic short test in seatools and windows does not show any D drive.

So my questions are first: What should I try to try and get the data off the dead drive?
and second: If it is not possible to repair the dead drive, how can I create a new volume with only the functional HDD to be my new D: drive in windows without reformatting it? So that I can at least keep half of my data.

 

[Rogue Leader]

But again, you have not once asked or considered what is wrong with the drive itself. Data recovery is almost entirely about fixing the failed hard drive in order to get the data back. For all you know it could be a very simple problem. I understand that hardware is probably not your specialty, and from a pure software perspective there is no way to fix it, so let someone else who knows about hardware chime in.

Data recovery is decidedly NOT about fixing the failed drive its about salvaging what MAY be readable from the platters. Very often it involves removing the platters in a clean room environment, placing them into a functional device, and salvaging whatever data can be salvaged.

What USAFRet is too humble to tell you is he does this hardware stuff for many years for the US Government. He is literally an expert in this . If there was a simple fix he would know it. If there was a simple fix you probably would have found it already. The reason hes mentioning getting files off the working drive is you are using a spanned volume, which is RAID 0 meaning the files are fragmented between the two drives. This increases performance as parts of the file are read from 2 places, the downside is you have lost half the fragment when the first drive failed.

He shared with you two credible links telling your data is tanked. Even a Data recovery service isn't helping you now. I understand you're frustrated but fighting with him and others isn't going to get your data back. Seagate themselves specifically said if your drive fails the Generic short test send it back:

https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/...8-digit-error-code-what-should-i-do-208311en/

This is not something you're fixing yourself, its a doorstop.

 

[fzabkar]

Physical data recovery very rarely involves transplanting platters. The only reason DR shops would do this is if the spindle motor were seized. As strange as it seems to me, multi-platter drives often have critical platter-to-platter alignments which must not be disturbed, so a platter transplant in such cases would be highly undesirable.

As for class 100 clean rooms, I believe very few shops have these, and very few DR people wear bunny suits. I believe most shops would have micro-filtered laminar flow cabinets which achieve much the same end. In fact here is an excellent DIY cabinet which one DR person uses regularly:

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29602
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6msyf7oahtmdqrg/AAAmniQ9yY53hgcd_fQ7qYqda?dl=0 (latest photos)

BTW, the current flyheight of disc heads is around 3nm. That's about the average distance between two molecules of air. At this scale, a particle of dust would look like Mt Everest to the head-disc interface.

A question for the OP -- do the heads move off the loading ramp? If not, and if there is no electronic or mechanical impediment to their movement, then it may be that the firmware is sensing a faulty head and aborting the unload.

 

[Darkbreeze]

My house is not so filthy that literally two seconds of exposure is going to brick a hard drive.

Yes, yes it is. ALL houses are so filthy that LITERALLY two seconds of exposure and the drive is ruined. In EVERY SINGLE instance. It's the EXACT reason WHY there are clean rooms. Unless you have thousands of dollars worth of positive pressure air filtration constantly running in your home, LVDL/LACS equivalents, then you have billions of dust particles floating around in the air in your home no matter how "clean" you think it is. My house is spotless. Immaculate, most days.

Even so, when the sunlight shines just right in the house or when I flip on a powerful enough flashlight in the dark, despite the fact that I regularly run an air purifier with HEPA filtration for several hours per week to help with allergens, there are STILL so many dust particles floating in the air that it's astounding.

you realize that that is exactly what is done by professionals who you send your hard drive to for recovery right? Most of them just use the desk in their office, some have a small glass container they put it in which is open to the air and does practically nothing.

This, is as far from reality as you can get without slipping into the event horizon and ending up somewhere else entirely. Which might still happen given the sheer egregiousness of the comment.

 

[t4ketheshot]

Physical data recovery very rarely involves transplanting platters. The only reason DR shops would do this is if the spindle motor were seized. As strange as it seems to me, multi-platter drives often have critical platter-to-platter alignments which must not be disturbed, so a platter transplant in such cases would be highly undesirable.

As for class 100 clean rooms, I believe very few shops have these, and very few DR people wear bunny suits. I believe most shops would have micro-filtered laminar flow cabinets which achieve much the same end. In fact here is an excellent DIY cabinet which one DR person uses regularly:

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29602
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6msyf7oahtmdqrg/AAAmniQ9yY53hgcd_fQ7qYqda?dl=0 (latest photos)

BTW, the current flyheight of disc heads is around 3nm. That's about the average distance between two molecules of air. At this scale, a particle of dust would look like Mt Everest to the head-disc interface.

A question for the OP -- do the heads move off the loading ramp? If not, and if there is no electronic or mechanical impediment to their movement, then it may be that the firmware is sensing a faulty head and aborting the unload.

I do not know for certain if the heads are moving but it sounds like they are. It is my understanding that opening the hard drive for a short amount of time is fine, but spinning it while it is open is a death sentence (this is due to the fact there is a filter in there that catches the dust particles off the platter as it spins). You can easily find countless examples online of people opening them and getting their data back, so the idea that opening it outside of a clean room instantly destroys it is simply false. I now believe that it is an electrical issue, as I have seen a few examples of hard drives with similar symptoms (spinning up, head moves two times and then shuts off) and in every case they said it was fixed by replacing the PCB. So I have ordered a replacement, which will take a while to get here from china. Once it does I will solder the old bios chip on it and try it out. I have already recovered most of the files I cared about off the other disk anyway with recovery software.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, good luck. Glad you got your data off the the other drive anyhow. You are luckier than most people.

 

[fzabkar]

I have seen a few examples of hard drives with similar symptoms (spinning up, head moves two times and then shuts off) and in every case they said it was fixed by replacing the PCB.

I have been watching professional data recovery forums for over 10 years. In 99% of cases where the drive shuts down immediately after spin-up, the problem is an internal one. There are particular cases (eg WD "Tornado" family) where a faulty PCB can produce a "head mimic" fault, but these are very rare.