mattiasnyc

Went to boot my computer and it wouldn't go past POST. BIOS couldn't find OS or drive. This was as I mentioned the OS drive and I didn't touch it prior to shutting down. I never initialize drives "willy nilly". The words "initialize", "erase", "format" etc throw up red flags in my brain and I've yet to be dumb enough to clean a drive from data. I'm plenty dumb in other ways to make up for it though. Then I went to the thread called " The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs" and went through the instructions and "unbricked" it. The symptoms of my drive conformed to the ones the "unbricking" would potentially solve. The drive then spun up properly and got detected by the OS. After that I tried absolutely nothing else but instead posted in this thread. I'm guessing "file based recovery" is some sort of time consuming scan where the software tries to intelligently piece together what binary constitutes a file, and what type of file that would be... Would that be the next step? Thanks again for your help and patience.

All zeroes.....

Hi, downloaded and installed "tiny hexer". Again, this is an application that is way beyond intuitive for a non-programmer/hacker/whatever. Could you tell me what to type and where in steps? I don't even know where to start. (or alternatively let me know if there's a quick guide and what its name would be so I could learn the stuff).

thanks, will do.

Q1: not really. I've never touched vista in my life, and 7 was just an os i messed sound with on the drive i have up and running now. It would be epic if it wasnt xp. Q2: i only recall having worked with one partition. I have a system with at least 4 drives normally so my usage is pretty compartmentalized. So i think it was one partition only. On it was xp x64, and it was fat or ntfs i suppose, but can unfortunately not recall which one.

I believe what is attached is what you're looking for... Or hope rather... Pulled a 17-hour overnight work session so my brain has been pure garbage for the past couple of days. The joy of working in television. Anyway, let me know if the file is what you were looking for. I had a hard time finding out how to operate the **** program. I love command prompts as long as I know what the hell I'm doing which is not the case here. So just so you know what I did...: 1. Searched for "dsfo", found and downloaded, put .exe file in new folder called "apps" on C 2. Went to command prompts and typed in: C:\apps\dsfo \\.\PhysicalDrive6 0 51200 F:\drive6 where "PhysicalDrive6" was the damaged drive ID and "F" is a USB flash drive. I based the syntax off of what you wrote in a different thread, so I'm hoping it's accurate. I couldn't get rawcopy to work at first, probably because I screwed up the syntax. drive6.7z

Yeah, I know, LoL, still with this issue right? So, here's the deal: I've been busy with a bunch of stuff and was about to give up on this when I remembered files that I now need so I figured I'd give it a shot and got into my head to plug in the original un-bricked drive just to see if testdisk would find anything on it, as opposed to the clone. In testdisk after the initial search I now found the following: >L, FAT16, LBA, 22947, 1 , 1 , 60799 , 254 63 , 600108382 Basically I'm now jumping back in the thread in response to your post #26, reporting back before I do anything else... ...standing by... PS. The commas in the string above are only there to give distance between numbers, they obviously don't appear in test disk.

The above are two different things, right? The first addressing the first 16 sectors and the second talking about where the NTFS "lives", right? So I'm looking at re-running one of the tests over the whole drive to cover where NTFS "lives", and re-running the other test with dsfo or dd. Right? I'll have to get back to this later this evening, but "no", I was not prompted to "initialize" and I do not recall having changed the source or clone drives in any way (meaning their partitions). One day the darn thing wouldn't spin, that's all. The only thing I can think of is if I some how screwed up the de-bricking of the source (as far as me being the culprit is concerned). I'll come back later with more info.

Thanks. I've attached HDhacker again, sectors 1 through 16 as that's all it took in one go. The DMDE result is pretty much zeroes in general and an NTFS search of the first 5GB shows nothing. I didn't really have time for anything else right now, but I'll try to do more in a by this evening. Sector_1through16.7z

Done. Still nothing. Same options; add partition, load backup or enter to continue...

Thanks. Can you tell I'm a noob at this? It's at 12%. I will report back.

I've now run test disk through the "Quick Search" function and it has found no partitions at all. My options at the bottom of the screen are: "Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, Enter: to continue" please advise, and thanks for all your time and help!

I will try this and NOT write anything until I've posted results here. One more thing: What do you refer to when you say "use the /log"? That particular sign/word ("/log") doesn't appear on the "testdisk step by step" guide page.

Thanks jaclaz, I will try Testdisk today. Does it take hours to do its thing or is it a matter of minutes? (I have to work from home today because of the hurricane)

For the record, I'm not sure I fully comprehend the procedure in getting the PBR (unless it stands for Pabst Blue Ribbon, in which case I know how to but just don't want to). Would it be unwise to move along to the next step with only a copy of the MBR and NOT the PBR?

Hi, here's the latest update of what I've done; The clone was "Disk 2" and shows up as one contiguous block in "Disk Management" and reads "Unallocated". HDHacker read teh first sector and gives the following readable "text" message: "Invalid partition table. Error loading operating system. Missing operating system", plus a bunch of other stuff. mbr attached... MBR_HardDisk2.7z

I have now cloned my unbricked drive. What would my next move be?

So right now it's at 9%, which means I have another week to go. I really wish there was another way... To reiterate: Trying to recover the data on the source drive (that failed and was unbricked) is playing with fire, right? So that's why I should prefer to use a clone...? and What type of risk are we talking if I start working on the source instead? Is it dependent on the operation I perform on it or is it something else at play?

Useful advice or not, I appreciate the input. It's currently chugging along and is at 18,1xx,xxx sector, or 2%. I suppose I'll just let this thing run until it's done. But it really does make me worried. If all of these sectors are bad I'm going to cry when I'm done. Thanks for the input and I'll harass you more once it's done... /m

Ok, I got side-tracked but have begun the cloning. Question: I started the process at 9:43, it's now 10:43 and the software is telling me it's currently on sector 3,374,xxx. "0%" complete. That's after a whole hour. Transfer rate is reading at 0.5MB/s!!! Source drive is internal SATA. In the software it came up as "ATA", not "SATA". Target drive is external FW400. Still, ATA should at worst transfer 16MB/s I think, and FW400 50MB/s, all theoretical of course. Any clues as to what I should check?

On HDDguru's page about the software it says: I would think this is a potential problem then, is it? Too bad because I like the fact that the UI gives information about the disk which means that one can easier recognize which disk is which...

Where can I learn the syntax of the commands you're showing me? I'm just a bit uncomfortable on a command line without having any frame of reference if you know what I mean... Do you know of any other cloning software that will do the same job but with an intuitive UI? (other people are welcome to jump in here) Also, I'm guessing here that the problem with some of the cloning softwares that exist is that they actually "analyze" the sectors and decide whether or not to clone them based on whether or not they appear to be used as opposed to "empty" or "corrupted", is this correct? Or in other words they're not really cloning drives as much as they are cloning some/most data on them, which in turn means that some of the data I wish to recover might not make it to the "clone" in the first place... Again: I greatly appreciate your help and patience with this. I'm pretty well versed in computer technology compared to the average person but this is all completely new to me as you can probably tell. So, again, thanks!

Actually my functional (win7) OS drive lives on SATA 3 or 4, and my damaged drive on 5 or 6. But as long as I can trust what's reported it shouldn't make a difference, so the question is: can I trust it?

should do, the above uses NOT any "fine-tuning", it will probably take some time (a few hours) to perform the copy. Be VERY, VERY careful in choosing m and n ....they are the disk numbers (as you can see them in Disk Management and/or diskpart, first disk (boot disk) is 0, if you have three disks they will be 0, 1 and 2 be sure to identify correctly which one is the source and which is the target. When cloning a disk drive it is a good idea to make sure that BOTH the "source" and the "target" drives are kept "cool", depending on your setup/hardware, it could be advisable to add a fan to have some additional airflow aroud the disks. I will use rawcopy as you suggested. I have a question about the highlighted section above: In my device manager I see the following: Drive 0 Unallocated (this is the problem drive) 465.76 GB Drive 1 Sys Reserve / C: / D: (this is the system drive) Drive 2 Crucial F: (mem stick) Drive 3 L: (mem stick) In other words on my system the "boot drive" isn't "Drive 0", but it appears to be "Drive 1". Does this seem correct?

I'm sorry jaclaz, I had a brain fart. As I mentioned in my first post my current OS is Windows 7 x64, not 8. I'm not sure I'll get access to other OS'. How about I just find a different cloner, like EaseUS Todo Backup Free Edition, clone the drive, and then I'll just give it a whirl and continue working on the clone instead of the original. I guess we'd see soon enough if the other software will operate properly under Win 7 x64 or not, with the target in question. Perhaps it'll be enlightening to others in the same situation. Or do you think it's a waste of time?