Tag Archives: data recovery

data recovery using selfimage getdataback for ntfs

Computer Aid Posted on by

I was asked to attempt to recover some data from a failed HDD.

The 40GB drive didn’t make any strange noises, and while connected to another PC, I could see files and folders.

Just to be safe, I froze the drive, then ran selfimage (in order to minimise the time the drive was left running).

I ended up making 3 images, but each time, I would only get 35 GB before selfimage would fail.

Once I had the images, I used getdataback to read the image, and extract all the files and folders to an area of my hard drive.

Since it was very likely that the last few gigabytes on the drive were mostly “empty” I figured I must have all the data I need.

The only problem was that many of the folder names had been lost… so most folders had names like: [001234], but the filenames and contents seemed perfect.

Since the customer was specifically looking for his accounting software, and his emails, I place them onto a seperate CD, with instructions on how to import the emails (which I tested previously).

The customer is very happy, as the data recovery only cost him a small part of the $2000 plus he was quoted by a PC “shop”.

Failing mdt hard drive (20Gb)

Computer Aid Posted on by

I don’t see many mdt (magnetic data technologies) hard drives, but with the few that I do see, its usually to recover data.

This particular one gave some very obvious signs: when the PC started, the bios POST warned dire consequences due to the SMART monitoring of the hard drive.

Continuing from that lead to windows XP taking a very long time to start. In fact, after 5 minutes, it still hadn’t started, so I decided to pull the plug and take the PC back to the office.

I sometimes dread doing data recovery, as it can sometimes mean complete data loss. And I have yet to find a customer that is prepared to pay $600 – $3000 to recover their digital photos (or even their accounting files!).

I was hoping this wouldn’t be a battle lasting many hours, while shuttling between the PC and the freezer.

Anyway, it all looked promising. I could easily read a few random files when I connected the drive to the office pc.

I decided to try a clone onto a 40GB hard drive… and the cloning process worked perfectly.

After that, I spent some time updating the XP (SP2, autopatcher, ms updates, antivir, defender, winpatrol, spyware blaster, defrag), then the PC was ready to go back to its owner

frozen hard drive allows recovery

Computer Aid Posted on by

A wd2000 sata hdd would only start when “cold”.

I took it to the office, and after a few tests, it became obvious that the drive wasn’t going to last much longer.

I decided to put it in the freezer (made sure it was sealed in a plastic bag, to prevent condensation on the electronics when I took it out.

I’ve tried the freezer trick many times, but this is the first time its actually worked.

It works for between 2 – 8 minutes, then I hear a clunk, and the drive disappears from XP.

I had to re-freeze it about 15 times, before I could recover about 120Gb of data.

After the 5th re-freeze, I got sick of waiting for my PC to startup while the frozen HDD was thawing, so I decided to plug in the drive while the PC was running (sata cable first, then the power cable. Hey! it worked!

This gave me an extra 2 minutes of copy time for each re-freeze.

I then started to wonder if I could “hot plug” an IDE HDD while a PC is running?

Well, I tried it, but it didn’t work. Looks like SATA drives are nicer to work with when recovering data.