HDD 'died' cyclic redundancy error

try a linux cd-live boot disk, may be of some help.Some linux things state they can recover windoze stuff FWIW I tried the latest Ubuntu CD live yesterday, thought it was not very good, possibly a bit joe public!

Knoppix may be better ,more nerdy, (Warning 1980's graphics)

martin

I did that a while back.

Neither Ubuntu or Xubuntu would work. I'm very unimpressed.

Graham

the

drive

If the drive spins up and locks in RPM and the actuator does click or thrash and it's recognized by the BIOS then the data is recoverable by you with the right software. The CRC is an error that the data you're trying to read does not pass a redundant check so you may have some bad blocks on the drive. Saw that much times with IBM drives in my IT pro days most recently with a 20 gig Travelstar laptop drive.

Doesn't surprise me especially if it was formatted in NTFS.

quite

the

drive

That's sort of what I was thinking. The drive is very quiet so it's not easy to determine if it's spinning even. That's why I had it ! Even head movement is near silent normally.

There's certainly no 'thrashing' though.

redundant

Again, that was roughly my thought. In years past I'd have used Norton disktools with some certaintly that it would find what's up. Not sure what to do now. It's formatted as FAT(32) not NTFS if that helps.

Graham

It wasn't. FAT32. Call me a 'stick in the mud' if you like but I like stuff I know works.

Graahm

Well the linux kernel has no problems mounting FAT partitions. I use my FAT formatted SD camera card here in Kubuntu all the time. And I prefer NTFS over FAT any day.

There's some really good tools out there, unfortunately I forget the name of the one I used, but I found a free demo of it online a couple years ago. Google for data recovery software and try one out. A word of caution though, if the data is valuable, take the drive to a pro, you risk destroying it beyond recovery by attempting to recover it yourself.

My reason for sticking with FAT was that I wanted W98 compatability.

Graham

Thanks for the input. There's nothing on it of such value that I can't live without it !

I am however curious since I've not come across such a fault before and I'd like to attempt a fix if only as an exercise.

I've never previously 'lost' or needed to 're-install' an installation of Windows you see. Short of total mechanical/electrical failure I'd like to maintain that record.

Graham

Ah Win98, that's fair. Some like the simplicity of it. I use linux for internet and XP for video/audio production.

I recommend tools from Ontrack (A well-known hard disk software and data recovery company located here in my home state); I frequently use ODRN (Ontrack Data Recovery for Netware) and it has worked wonders to salvage file systems despite significant bad blocks and failing servo tracks. There are other versions of ODR for other O/S platforms. FWIW I also use an antique version of Norton Diskedit (DOS) to work at the sector level on scsi drives.

Regards,

Michael

stuff I

I'm keen to explore Linux but my results to date haven't been very promising. It seems to me that the much-touted 'live' CDs require a fairly modern PC to run. The trouble is that they give no indication of whether or not the PC can support it or not.

I will keep trying though. I have another 'box' in mind.

Graham

The disk drive manufacturers often have recovery tools. I had to do that recently. Made a DOS disk booted to the recovery tool and sent it discovering and marking bad sectors. I had symptoms similar to Grahams, the machine was locked in a continuous reboot cycle. After marking the bad sectors the machine booted and recovered the lost files (one of the few things I appreciate about XP). I then transferred to a new HD.

Robert

the

drive

Jeez! 300GB UDMA drives are $59 now for the high end.

Why would ANYONE still be pounding around on a sub 100GB drive?!

OLD...

SLOW...

AND DAMN LIKELY TO FAIL SOON!

They're still around ?

I have used Ontrack tools in the past but I imagined they'd gone the way of all things.

Yes. If only a modern OS would let you do that !

I well recall a specific instance where I'd goofed slightly due to poor documentation (jumper settings in the early days of IDE master/slave drives) and thankfully didn't panic and f*ck up. Norton sorted it. But then again, Norton wasn't Symantec back in those days.

Don't you love it when Norton says 'this drive has a damaged partition table. Would you like to recover it ?'

Graham

Those are live/install CDs.

Try KNOPPIX 5.1.1

It was the first, and is the best live bootable, useable as a recovery tool CD (from a certain POV).

Made by whom ?

Graham

Yes. And that is a good or bad thing in exactly what way ?

Ok. I'll take a peek at that.

Graham