t43 hdd problem :(

[polityk]

im angry...
I'm sitting on a livecd ubuntu and my firefox crashes every few minutes ;/
i've written a big post and it had disappeared :[
that is why now it's gonna be short one...

i dropped my t43... about 50cm but running and almost all of the bottom hit the ground.
the drive goes "trrr.....trrr....trrrr...trrr...trrrr" and nothing more.
I can't boot windows or even get my bootloader to run.

any ideas how to restore the data ?

tommorow i'll try to use a PC and a usb <-> ata cable maybe partition magic or ontrack will see anything on the drive...

f** the drive i want my data !! :/
god... 10 years with computers and im still not used to backing up data on my personal computers !! i'm an idiot... it's the second IBM hdd with same symptoms.. last one looks nice on my wall - opened..

help...? plz...

p.s. I read sth about freezing the hdd and the unfreezing so if the heads are stuck they can unlock.... some guy said tha he hit the drive with a hammer - it worked, he copied the data and threw the drive out of the window... I'll try freezing untill tommorow....

p.s.2 frozen, unforozen => nothing happened :/
now PC + USB <-> ata and if it does not help: hammer if i don't find any better option.

[drnoom]

goto:

www.hddguru.com

more expertises in HDD there..

[NS]

Be careful not to break the HDD platter because it will not crack or break into half.. it will shatter into many pieces and it contained toxic substances and the broken pieces are very sharp. I broke one platter and scattered the pieces all over the house and my dad scolded me for one whole week.

Using a hammer on the HDD?? Where did you hear that gossip from? From what i know, it is just plain crap. It will never work. How can you use force on a fragile object?? **No offence here, dude**

Try to retrieve your data by connecting the HDD to a desktop and run it using the external cable. As for the freezing part, it will not work 100%.

Can you try to connect the drive to other computers and run PC doctor and check how many bad partitions it has?? If it is less than 5% bad sectors, then do a low level reformat and try to retrieve as many datas as possible.. Pray hard..

NOTE: Always backup your important datas onto CDs/DVDs... Don't be lazy..

If all else don't work, then you need to bring that broken HDD to those shops which do data recovery. DO NOT open the HDD.

[polityk]

well... with the hammer it could work in theory but not in my case - the head was not stuck. i was quite angry when i wrote the first post, and that is why i wanted to grab ANY solution...
hopefully in the morning i tried more conventional ways.


I did some software tricks like restoring partition table, repairing bad sectors etc. and as for now the drive is in better condition because any PC can see it and it appears under windows.
the bad thing is that there is a filesystem problem and no partitions visible by any kind of software ;/

The problem is that some people told me that those filesystem problems could be due to IBM's security features like hdd password and security chip. The drive could be only readable in my t43.
I'm trying to install winxp on a SD card in a reader and set the broken drive as a slave in t43, and then use some Ontrack, Partition magic, Disk doctor or others...

Wouldn't low level (or normal) format decrease my chances for retrieving the data ?

about backing up well... whenever there is a similar problem i say to myself: "I will back up my data" but I never really did a full backup Now I think that I will buy a 8gb CF card for back ups :] IF i restore my data...

[SteveS]

polityk:

The file system errors probably result from a damaged file allocation table, the sector(s) where the drive keeps track of where it stores the data. If you were not using the HDD password in the IBM Client Security Solution software, than the files on the disk should be readable assuming the entries in the file allocation table are intact.

Impact damage to disks usually results in damaged media, where the heads gouged into it from the drop. Normally the head “flies” over the media on a cushion of air with a gap that is only a few microns. (I once read that this is the equivalent of a 747 flying at mach 7 only 3 inches above the ground!). If the impact is high enough, the heads can also be twisted on the actuator support arm, or even cracked. In any case, I would replace the drive once the valuable data is recovered.

There are data recovery services who will recover all the data possible, for a fee. They basically disassemble the drive in a clean room, remove the platters, and place them on a spin stand with good heads. They can’t recover data from physically damaged sectors, or sectors which have lost the reference entries in the file allocation table. Basically, these services work when no data can be recovered from the drive at all, such as head damage, or circuit failure in the drive electronics. As you can image, the cost of this service is high. Since you are able to read some of the data on the drive, I doubt that a recovery service would pick up any more.

[polityk]

well.. there is something with the file alllocation table for sure...
I just hope that only some of the data are unreadable..
for now i don't have any data, but the drive is finally recognized..

[Johan]

I once had an unbootable Windows XP HDD (NTFS) with much valuable user data which I wanted to recover. I succesfully used GetDataBack for NTFS. You may try the free demo-version to see if it finds any files... NB: At this time, be careful not to write any data to the HDD (or run any programs on it which might try write data onto it).

Good luck!

Best regards,

Johan

[NathanA]

One must ask, if this was a T43, why didn't the hard drive protection circuitry kick in?? I realize that it cannot prevent every single possible kind of hard disk failure resulting from impact, but if the accelerometer was working properly and you were in Windows at the time it happened, at the very least I can't see how the heads would have impacted on the platters, so something else must have happened (?).

If it is a partition table issue and you see no partitions on the drive, I would highly recommend for you to check out TestDisk. It can also fix some filesystem problems for FAT, NTFS, and ext2/3 as well. It may not pick up your partitions (esp. the NTFS ones) on the first pass, but if you follow that up with the second, much more thorough scan option, I have NEVER had it fail to find missing partitions. It can figure out exactly where the partition boundaries should be and rebuild your entire partition table from scratch. This tool is amazing and has saved my @$$ on multiple occasions, and it is free + GPL.

A copy is included on the GParted Live CD.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

-- Nathan

[NaT]

What was the type of your partition? NTFS or ext3? If it's NTFS, let's try GetDatabackNTFS. It helped me a few times and it's worth trying. It's a non-intrusive data recovering because you can just read the from the drive and save the result in another disk.

If your OS was linux, and you were using ext3, and you didn't have a active harddrive protection software run, I don't know the software that can help that.

[SteveS]

NathanA wrote:

One must ask, if this was a T43, why didn't the hard drive protection circuitry kick in?? I realize that it cannot prevent every single possible kind of hard disk failure resulting from impact, but if the accelerometer was working properly and you were in Windows at the time it happened, at the very least I can't see how the heads would have impacted on the platters, so something else must have happened (?).

The active protection system can not always protect a drive from shock, just as an airbag can not always protect passengers in a auto collision. During shock, there are two protection mechanisms which may be involved. First, most mobile hard drives have their own accelerometer which senses excessive lateral G forces. If during a write, the drive senses a G force approaching the level that might overcome the head actuator ability to position the head, the write current is instantly cut off. This avoids the possibility of overwriting an index track if the head is forced to slide across the platter, which would destroy the drive.
The IBM/Lenovo APS goes further. First, the accelerator senses force in a different axis – force that could cause a head crash into the platter. When it senses the G forces building up, it issues a “Unload immediate” command to the drive. The drive aborts any read or write in process, and “parks” the head. However, unloading the head requires a finite amount of time, which varies depending where the head was on the media. The system counts on the flexibility in the drive mounting system to dampen some of the shock load during the time the head is unloading. Obviously, the structure offers different amounts of damping, depending on the axis of the force. In some cases, it is possible for the shock to build up to the level that could crash the head before the unload operation is complete. This is much more likely to occur is the notebook is dropped on a hard surface, like a concrete or hardwood floor. In most cases, the APS will protect the drive, but don’t count on it. Hard drives are fragile devices.

[polityk]

Johan - Thanks for help, Ill try this software :]

NathanA - the Active protection did not help because the laptop had repetitive small shocks which turned the protection off for 30s and that must have been the problem...

NaT - it was NTFS...