Direct MP3 Download: My Hard Drive Died #6 – Data Recovery Diagnostics: Where to Start and Stop
Hosted by Steve Cherubino and Scott Moulton of MyHardDriveDied.com.
Topics discussed:
Phreaknic
Second longest computer conference (13th year, approximately 250 participants)
October 30th-31st, 2009 (Nashville, TN)
DIY Hard Drive Diagnostics: Understanding a Broken Drive
< Link to the Speech Slides > PDF: Big – 39 Megs
How to know what’s wrong with your hard drive
Let’s think about the problem first, let’s listen to the sounds before we disassemble a drive
Stop and think about the problem first, do not take the lid off
It could be a Firmware, Head, Board, Motor or Platter problem.
Seagate and Western Digital have exceptions: replacing the head or known firmware problems
Five Phases of Data Recovery
1) Diagnostic Copying/Imaging the drive
2) Repair Repair the drive, requires hardware or special equipment
3) Image Image, Copy or Recover the physical drive
4) Recovery Perform Logical Recovery of files
5) Repair Repair files or partitions, re-assemble data
Absolutely do not ever run any utilities on the original drive until you image it
CheckDisk, FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, say no to SpinRite (it writes data to the same drive, instead of a destination drive)
Media Tools Pro Data recovery and forensic tool
Do not use USB connectors
It is a dumb connector, it doesn’t handle ATA commands, cannot handle errors very well,
Connect a drive directly to a motherboard instead.
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
Includes MHDD which is the most popular freeware application for low-level HDD diagnostics.
VICTORIA Russian utility
DDRescue Data recovery tool, copies data from one file or block device
MyRescue A program to rescue the still-readable data from a damaged hard disk.
Recovery Services/Sites
Pandora Recovery
Ontrack Data Recovery
Imaging Software
Only works on good working drives, they do not deal with a physical damaged drive
Acronis True Image, Drive Cloner Rx, Micro-Scope Diagnostic Suite
Power Supplies
The heavier they power supply is, the better it is.
Brands: Antec, Cooler Master,
Light Peak Technology
Light Peak is a new high-speed optical cable technology which delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s.
At 10Gb/s, you could transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds.
Intel discovery, connects drives via optical interfaces.
Coming to motherboards around 2010.
Email question:
Jeff:
Q: 160GB WD drive, detected as a WDC Rom Model, Drive will click 3 times, MHDD reports a recall fail, what could be the problem?
A: The system area wasn’t read correctly, could be problems with: head, preamp, scratch on the platter or board/firmware damage.
Data Recovery Classes
http://www.myharddrivedied.
Notes by Jorge Hernandez of 123ComputerRepair.com
