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A Walk Through the Hard Drive Recovery Process
Fields writes "It's well known that failed hard drives can be recovered, but few people actually use a recovery service because they're expensive and not always successful. Even fewer people ever get any insights into the process, as recovery companies are secretive about their methods and rarely reveal any more information that is necessary for billing. Geek.com has an article walking through a drive recovery handled by DriveSavers. The recovery team did not give away many secrets, but they did reveal a number of insights into the process. From the article, "'[M]y drive failed in about every way you can imagine. It had electro-mechanical failure resulting in severe media damage. Seagate considered it dead, but I didn't give up. It's actually pretty amazing that they were able to recover nearly all of the data. Of course, they had to do some rebuilding, but that's what you expect when you send it to the ER for hard drives.'" Be sure to visit the Museum of Disk-asters, too.
A hard drive shaped freezer.
"It's well known that failed hard drives can be recovered"
[Citation Needed]
I'm sorry, but that was the most content-free load I've read on /. in a while. And no, I'm not new here - I just usually don't RTFA. ;-P
Google cache?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
4. profit!
on where you are, and that determines how hard condoms are to come by... (Careful... I'm watching my prepositions, and not necessarily the pre-positions....)...
But, in the vein of hard drives, i guess a not having protection can cause a bunch of thrashing about in the end... (buns, umm, PUNS intended...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I had a drive with a mechanical problem that wouldn't spin up. It didn't have anything critical but it did have my last x weeks worth of software downloads which would have been a pain to re-download. I tried banging it, freezing it, you name it. What worked in the end was making sure it was upside down when it was powered up and giving it a little tap to get it spinning. Got it running for 24 hours - long enough to get all my data off. About 200Gb. Obviously a mechanical failure and obviously pure luck that I got it working again.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
No, I'm New Here
Assuming, of course, that if hiding the data is that important, the cost of a flash drive is a sacrifice you're willing to make.
"Why are you watching the washing machine?"
"I love entertainment, as long as it's clean"
"You might try reading the article linked in the parent posting for a case where the drive had both bad electronics *and* the head crashed yet they still recovered 80% of the data."
80%? People get paid for this?
Guessing 1 or 0 for every bit will successfully recover 50% of the data, assuming the ones and zeros are equally represented.
Once you've got it 50% recovered it's a simple matter to flip the bits in the remaining 50%. 100% recovery.
Ah young love. ;)
Yes, once a geek discovers the beauty of a good backup system, he/she has stepped into a new world.
My backup/archive server is my most lovingly maintained system. It has saved me several times, and recently had to go through a hard drive replacement. That had me nervous.
I don't think Class 100 really qualifies as "ultra-cool" in the clean-room world, but it *does* however have a certain cachet of inconvenience as far as having to take a non-trivial amount of time to get into the bunny suit, walk across the 50 feet of sticky mats, through the air showers and into the actual clean-room area only to discover *then* that you have to take a leak. I've had it happen more than once.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Whoosh!!!
Fine, so it's the air leaking out and ... hardening ... yeah.
"Good news, everyone!"
Air is a fluid.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Back in the days when I did a lot of Win98 installs, I always carried a nice big hammer around. Put it on the computer before booting it up, and it installed perfectly *every time*.
It started as a joke, but it actually worked... guess those casings had built-in hammer detectors, and the installer checked for it.
Kinda like my workbench HD, an ancient (800 mb) W.D. I got it as a failed HD from a customer, and it was then about 5 years old. I gave it the "beat it ever-harder, until it either gives in or dies" treatment, and....
Powered on... just a whir, no bootup:
rrrrrr... [tap tap]
RRRRRR... [TAP TAP]
*R*R*R*R*R*R*R... [*!!*WHAP*!!*]
And after that it was unstictioned for good, and has worked fine ever since. It's now 13 years old!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?