Need to Recover Data from a Crashed X60S HD

[yodabeesh]

I own a X60S with a 100GB/7200 Hitachi Travelstar HDD.

The other morning, I did some housekeeping and deleted about 2GB of video from the HD. After I deleted the files, I ran Diskeeper, and left the system to defrag while I went out for the morning.

I returned a few hours later and the defrag appeared to be complete. The screen was frozen, and the system was non-responsive to the mouse or keyboard. I shut down with
the Power button and began a reboot.

The system began to reboot and I was prompted for Safe Mode, etc... Of course, I picked NORMAL MODE (ugh). XP began to boot, taking longer than usual, and then it automatically looped: the system began to reboot again (starting with the ThinkPad Screen).

I went through this exercise a number of times, and sometimes I'd get a blue screen that spouted out errors like "0x000000ED", etc.

I tried booting in Safe Mode. This did not work. The screen would appear like a black DOS screen, and I could see lines of commands... it looked like it was searching/attempting to load what I assumed to be all of the XP OS files.

I came to the conclusion that I had a bad sector or partition, and that the system could not access the necessary files on this sector to properly load the OS.

(As an aside... I had not backed up my HD in a very very long time. Lesson learned.)

I took the machine to Geek Squad at BestBuy (yes, very desperate here bc my entire life was on this HD) and the service guy told me what I already knew... bad sectors, etc blahblahblah. For $200 they could back up 9GB of data and then for an addition $199, they could diagnose and fix my system. This would not work for me since I knew that My Documents were WAY beyond 9GB. I also tried another vendor that specializes in data recovery, but they told me that it would at a minimum cost $500 (and could cost up to $2400 depending on methods employed.)

I've attempted to run the Rescue and Recovery on the x60s, but to no avail. It does not detect the C: drive where the majority of my data resides. And of course... I have no backup image of the machine.

I removed the HD from the machine and put it into an external enclosure. I connected the now-external HD to a T41 via USB. The computer detected and accepted the USB Mass Storage Device, but when I went to My Documents, I did not see the external HD. I think it is because the partition on the external HD is bad.

So, I have two issues here:

• 1. I need to extract/back up my data from the X60S drive, but cannot detect it as an external drive using a different computer. This is my primary concern.
  
  2. I need to fix the bad partitions, which I think will require a reinstall or repair of the XP OS.

Does anyone have any suggestions for #1? If I put the X60S HD into an extl enclosure, how can I get a different computer to detect it as an external drive so that I can extract my data...?

Please help me.

[smvp6459]

You might try connecting it to a Linux box. I've found Linux can occasionally look at damaged disks that the native OS can't deal with.

[yodabeesh]

Mmm... unfortunately I do not have access to a Linux box

[ThinkFanatic]

If you have another PC, you should be able to just connect it up via a USB cable/enclosure and have it come up as a second drive. The issue is that you need to make sure it is a SATA disk enclosure.

Once you do that, you should be able to have it come up just fine, as long as the disk is addressable. Then you can copy your data off, and either reload your OS (Factory Restore) w/F11 on boot, or call 800-IBM-SERV and have your disk replaced. You can run diagnostics from the preboot area as well, just boot into the Rescue and Recovery interface, and then select "Diagnose Hardware" on the left.

I would also recommend that you look at Rescue and Recovery going forward, and perhaps use it to back up locally and to a USB HDD (they are pretty cheap).

[GomJabbar]

Here are a couple of choices.

Absolute Raleigh has generally been well reported on in this forum (I don't recall reading anything specifically on data recovery). The second link I just happened to have. I do not know their record. The third link is a large data recovery service that has been around for some time. I have no experience with them either.

http://www.absoluteraleigh.com/services ... overy.html

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

http://www.ontrack.com/

[brumwald]

Recovering data is expensive and although BestBuy doesn't exist in my country I really doubt there competence on this. And having a 9 gb limit really makes me wanna run away from them.

But real data-recovery companies do cost alot.

For the software approach I'd give SpinRite at look at http://www.grc.com


Although every time you do something with the drive the probability of a full recover decreases so if you really value the data I'd recommend to pay the premium price of an respectable recovery firm.

[yodabeesh]

Once you do that, you should be able to have it come up just fine, as long as the disk is addressable.

I did get a SATA enclosure, but the disk is not addressable when I plug it into another computer. Strangely enough, the Hardware Manager does detect a "USB Mass Storage Device." It just can't find a disk address ("x:" drive doesn't show up on My Computer as an external HDD).

I'm throwing in the towel and contacted a firm ADR Data Recovery to help me out. I'm afraid of making things worse.

http://www.adrdatarecovery.com/

It pains me to go through this as I like to think of myself as rather tech savvy (IT consultant here) and I typically do my own troubleshooting. What a humbling experience. Lesson learned.

[ThinkFanatic]

Sorry, double post.

[ThinkFanatic]

I did get a SATA enclosure, but the disk is not addressable when I plug it into another computer. Strangely enough, the Hardware Manager does detect a "USB Mass Storage Device." It just can't find a disk address ("x:" drive doesn't show up on My Computer as an external HDD).

I had this same thing happen to me trying to get a USB HDD to work under Server 2003, and I went into disk management, and had to assign it a drive handle in there before it would recognize. Not certain this will fix you, but might be worth a try before spending the dough for data recovery service.

Good luck!

[miri]

Hi,

You could also try Norton Partition Magic. I had a same experience where the partition was not recognised by Windows.

Norton PM has a tool called Partition Browser. It browses the partition and let's you to copy/paste the information in another part of the HDD.

Regards,
Miri

[pdudas]

......[censored]...bla-bla-bla----
Why are you giving expensive advices?...

Download a Minipe boot Cd. This is a special Windows XP running from the disc.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3389459/min ... er-latest)

Connect an USB CDROM to the thinkpad, and boot from the minipe.
Everything you need is on the CD.

You should start the network and connect to a network share (just to have enough space to store the recovered data).

If you can see the files you need in total commander, you should backup them to the network share.

If you cannot see the files, then you should start Easy Recovery Pro. With the Easy recovery Pro you can backup all the necessary data from the disc. Even if the partition is not visible, the ERP can locate the partition (better if you tell the partition type or size) and can save the files from. Erp cannot backup files to the disc where the files are, so you have to connect to a network share or external USB drive.

If the ERP cannot backup the files from your drive, you can throw your drive to the trashcan, no simple data recovery worth the money...

Here in hungary has a professional company which can recover most of all data from a damaged discs. www.kurt.hu
They are the best in data recovery. They are very expensive, but they are the only who can help you if the ERP not.

If you cannot found Minipe, I have a minipe image for 1gb flash usb drive. Give me enough space on an ftp server and I can upload it to you. You can transfer the image to the pendrive with Winimage.

[Comage]

Second the suggestion with ERP. I've used it more than a couple of times, and it's been able to pull off my files off from a bad drive.

But there still exists a high chance that your recovered files will be corrupted to a certain extent.

[steveg47]

It is possible that you may have a corrupt MBR or boot record. It is definitely worth a try to repair them. Put the drive back in the x60. Use an XP or 2000 installation cd and run the recovery console. From the recovery console prompt enter the command fixmbr. After fixmbr completes enter the command fixboot. Exit the recovery console and try to access the drive from the external usb enclosure. Good luck.

[spaznrq]

I am able to recovery some accidental or shift-deleted files with this program:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

I am not sure if this utility would be able to recover files off a drive in an external enclosure that cannot be detected by another computer, but I'm just throwing this out as an option to look into. It is freeware so you have nothing to lose if all else fails.

I hope it helps in your case.

[renhui]

I also second Easy Recovery Pro. I was able to use it to recover about 200GB stuff from a full 250GB harddrive. All partitions on that drive were corrupted, similiarly, after a diskeeper defragmentation.

[yodabeesh]

ADR was able to recover all of my data (58GB of a 100GB HD... the rest was probably the OS and programs -- which I still have the install files.) I should receive an extl USB HD with all of my data by Wed.

I'm embarrassed to say this, but I did pay the "ransom"... $1800 USD. I'm in a crazy situation where I am in process of selling my house and need some v important documents/contracts. Also, I cannot work without my HD.

I contacted IBM and they will send me a Recovery CD ($45) and I ordered a new 100GB/7200RPM Hitachi TravelStar HD from newegg ($120.) What an expensive lesson I've learned. At least I didn't have to buy an entirely new OS.

I just thought of all the nice kiteboarding equipment that I could have bought... Ugh. Hopefully I can write this off as a business expense on my taxes.