So I'm leaving the house today and see my gf's computer with the invalid disk error. Try to reboot, same thing and the hard drive is not sounding healthy. I've told her many times to back up her pictures and I'm sure she hasn't and will want them recovered. I'm sure that will be one of my projects tomorrow. I tried to find the thread to recover data from bad harddrives on ME but the site is gives me a currently unavailable message (Doing something again K?). Anyhow can you guys list some of the recommendations/tools again? Thanks in advance.

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=neoee]So I'm leaving the house today and see my gf's computer with the invalid disk error. Try to reboot, same thing and the hard drive is not sounding healthy. I've told her many times to back up her pictures and I'm sure she hasn't and will want them recovered. I'm sure that will be one of my projects tomorrow. I tried to find the thread to recover data from bad harddrives on ME but the site is gives me a currently unavailable message (Doing something again K?). Anyhow can you guys list some of the recommendations/tools again? Thanks in advance.[/quote]

take out the dirve and attach it as a slave on another system. The other system will be able to see it unless there is actual physical damage. Just pray system files were missing and you will be ok.

Re: Hard drive failure

^ ^ Yeah. That'd be the first thing to do. If you can see the drive, and it states there are 0 files and 0 filesize, find a recovery program and scan the drive. You can get virtually any of those recovery programs for free, run them, find the one that works best, and if it's a trial, you'll have to purchase it and use it. Don't worry about the cost, I'm sure those pics are priceless. People will recommend all sorts of programs but they don't always work for everyone's situations. I tried over three dozen programs when my drives crashed due to a bad FireWire driver and luckily for me, I was able to recover over 700GB of music. Phew.

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I think the best program recommended that was floating around before recovery-wise should you be able to use it, was getdataback; there's one for NTFS drives and one for FAT/FAT32.

The fact the hard drive isn't "sounding healthy" as you claim pretty well means it's on its way out...any drive that whirs up and down trying to reach full speed, clicks/chunks trying to access data and makes just a lot of unnecessary noise is either basically dead, or has very little life left on it....

PS; check the warranty on it...probably is out of it, but if it's still within, back/recover the data if you can and RMA it for another one.

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^ ^ I'd be careful on RMAing it if you have data on there that isn't quite "legal". I'm not exaggerating. Some people have been known to get in trouble with stuff like that so if you think you have a chance of sending it in for a replacement, and you got illegal programs, files, applications, etc., I'd just chuck it and get a new one. ;)

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Ok so I think I got lucky. I haven't verified yet, I just had the gf grab one of my lab computers and swap it for hers. I didn't notice but there was a disk in the floppy drive. Don't know how it got there. I suspect it was ejected but never removed and somehow got pushed in. The noise at boot up that I mistook for the HD was probably just a very dusty floppy drive (it didn't sound like a normal floppy does else I probably would have noticed earlier). I still have to hook her computer back up to verify but I'm 99% certian thats it.

Well I guess if anything comes out of this my GF will be sure to back her shit up. :lol:

Thanks for all the quick replies and useful info everyone. :RockOn:

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dumbass :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

floppy; go figure

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=FM]dumbass :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

floppy; go figure[/quote]

I know amature move on my part, but I didn't even think I had a floppy in my house anymore. :oops:

Re: Hard drive failure

^ ^ :roflmao: That's awesome.

:Anal:

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=neoee]I tried to find the thread to recover data from bad harddrives on ME but the site is gives me a currently unavailable message (Doing something again K?). [/quote]

Mercuryengine is about to be shut down this week because not enough people used it so you need to continue here with Computer problems.

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Damn asshats closing down the only thing that made sense. :p

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I can run it if you want to administer it, but DAMN that's a scary proposition knowing Beanz is administering something :lol:

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I'd love to have it back. It was fun, but yeah, it was way too slow; not enough traffic going on. What a pity. Oh well. It's time to move on and bring on the :Anal:

;)

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=beanzncheez]^ ^ I'd be careful on RMAing it if you have data on there that isn't quite "legal". I'm not exaggerating. Some people have been known to get in trouble with stuff like that so if you think you have a chance of sending it in for a replacement, and you got illegal programs, files, applications, etc., I'd just chuck it and get a new one. ;)[/quote]

Are you serious?

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=Nigel Harkness]Are you serious?[/quote]Dude. Think about it. You mean to tell me that that never crossed your mind?

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That is nonsense beanz, you think products that got rma'd will go through "serial validity" tests. I'd like to know ONE person who became a victim of that. Such crap.

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btw you still searching for an answer on your problem Sunny ?

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=Kamal]That is nonsense beanz, you think products that got rma'd will go through "serial validity" tests. I'd like to know ONE person who became a victim of that. Such crap.[/quote]I didn't say it will always happen. I said it can and apparently it has happened (reported by people, not myself) but I haven't witnessed it first hand. If you feel so inclined, you might want to read my post next time. Thanks again, kiddo. ;)

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=Kamal]btw you still searching for an answer on your problem Sunny ?[/quote] No, it turned out that somehow a floppy found itself a way into the drive and the puter must have rebooted after one of those windows auto updates. :oops:

But to defend beanz a bit, I have heard of people who have gotten busted with kiddie porn on their drives/computers that were sent in for repair. Though I don't know of anyone with just pirated software, its not that hard for me to imagine it happening.

Re: Hard drive failure

I hate those auto updates and those reboots. I somehow had that turned on by Norton Update once before. I shut that bitch down.

Re: Hard drive failure

[quote=neoee]But to defend beanz a bit, I have heard of people who have gotten busted with kiddie porn on their drives/computers that were sent in for repair. Though I don't know of anyone with just pirated software, its not that hard for me to imagine it happening.[/quote]

thats something entirely different, PCs going for a fix will HAVE to be booted up to check for errors, an RMA'd Hard Drive is "usually" a HD that doesn't load and if the diagnosis software (most of them are in Dos format) is unable ti fix it, then they pop the sucker open to evaluate for hardware errors and reformat the drive.

But I have NEVER hear of any reports of people sending their HDs in for an RMA that the techs at Maxtor and Western Digital or ANY freakin hard drive company sits at his desk with a bunch of broken hard drives and goes through a serial validating process of software. Can you IMAGINE the financial overhead for a company to do something of this sort that they wont even get any freakin return for ?

Kiddie porn is totally different, there's a sicko on the run and needs to be busted, but I wont buy beanz story for one second, no matter how you disguise in terms of "reports" and "people are saying". Yea people are saying they dug to the core of the earth and found Lucifer.

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^ ^ You really should start having sex, dude. :p

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awesome come back..... did you come up with that up yourself ? :p

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Not at all. You should thank your wife. ;)

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dang you're a pro at this

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^ ^ I'm aiming for your dot. ;)