I’ve been asked to try to rescue as much information as possible from a clicking Excelstor Callisto 80GB hard drive. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s got some fairly important stuff on it.
Even using another hard drive to boot up (with the clicking drive on the secondary IDE channel), the computer refuses to boot up. I’m going to try it on a USB-IDE converter today, you know… boot up first, then plug it in. I know this may not work either and that it may either freeze the computer or just refuse to give me any sugar. I also realise that it’s on its last legs and the more I fart about with it, the worse it’s going to get.
So, I beg you, oh techie experts. Do you know any good ways to rescue this drive, even if only for enough time to back it up?
I’m willing to try anything non-destructive, or probably later, even destructive.
Is your hard drive installed to the IDE port on your hard drive or is it in a USB cradle? This will probably work either way but most likely if its attached to the motherboard IDE port.
If your having trouble booting into your operating system (Windows I assume) then on a friends computer you might try downloading a Knoppix Linux Live CD or DVD from shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/
I’ve never heard of putting it in the freezer. Thats great!
Thanks, circleback. That link is fantastic. Exactly what I was looking for. I may well try that this weekend. I did manage to boot into Fedora Core last night, but the drive didn’t show up (I’m really crap at linux still, so I really didn’t know where to take it from there). Anyway, that tutorial is perfect. Cheers.
Anyway, I also managed to boot into my OWN Windows XP last night too, with the damaged drive on a USB to IDE adaptor. I managed to get all 4 (yes, 4x20GB partitions, so I could keep them as FAT32 (May end up being a smart choice)) to show up in My Computer. However, they all showed up as being RAW, and I can’t access ANY data on them. I’ve tried Googling for stuff on this, but no luck so far.
So, it has changed a little bit. I now need help rescuing files from a disk that says “RAW”. (Disk is 80GB, in case that’s not obvious)
Thanks again (BTW, the clicking comes and goes now).
I’ve been asked to try to rescue as much information as possible from a clicking Excelstor Callisto 80GB hard drive. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s got some fairly important stuff on it.
Even using another hard drive to boot up (with the clicking drive on the secondary IDE channel), the computer refuses to boot up. I’m going to try it on a USB-IDE converter today, you know… boot up first, then plug it in. I know this may not work either and that it may either freeze the computer or just refuse to give me any sugar. I also realise that it’s on its last legs and the more I fart about with it, the worse it’s going to get.
So, I beg you, oh techie experts. Do you know any good ways to rescue this drive, even if only for enough time to back it up?
I’m willing to try anything non-destructive, or probably later, even destructive.
Thanks again,
Stu[/quote]
If you have really really important data on a drive and it’s clicking/whirring etc. then the first thing you should do is NOT USE IT. Data recovery is possible but if something mechanical has gone wrong and the head has dropped onto the platter then you will just be scratching the thing to death.
Clicking drives are often (almost always, but I’m trying to be optimistic) unrecoverable with software tools because the clicking indicates a problem with a read head. There are companies who can dismantle the thing in a clean room for you and physically transplant the platter(s) into another drive or replace worn stepper motors etc… They’re expensive though… Sorry But good luck!
PS: most modern drives are pretty good at reporting when they’re getting a lot of checksum errors and failure is imminent. I recently helped two different friends recover data after their drives had been reporting for the past month that they were about to die. Could have saved a whole lotta trouble by paying attention.
[quote=“irishstu”]Thanks, circleback. That link is fantastic. Exactly what I was looking for. I may well try that this weekend. I did manage to boot into Fedora Core last night, but the drive didn’t show up (I’m really crap at linux still, so I really didn’t know where to take it from there). Anyway, that tutorial is perfect. Cheers.
Anyway, I also managed to boot into my OWN Windows XP last night too, with the damaged drive on a USB to IDE adaptor. I managed to get all 4 (yes, 4x20GB partitions, so I could keep them as FAT32 (May end up being a smart choice)) to show up in My Computer. However, they all showed up as being RAW, and I can’t access ANY data on them. I’ve tried Googling for stuff on this, but no luck so far.
So, it has changed a little bit. I now need help rescuing files from a disk that says “RAW”. (Disk is 80GB, in case that’s not obvious)
Thanks again (BTW, the clicking comes and goes now).[/quote]
It’s ‘RAW’ because it can’t access any of the information that tells your computer what’s on it. The electronics on the drive are still working fine but I suspect a serious mechanical failure (90% of clicking problems are dead stepping motor). There is no software workaround. Sorry again
But good luck!