So i've got this 200 GB Maxtor hard drive that had all my ... well everything , documents , music , backups and it clicks. I know this is a sign of a faulty hdd and that i should try to backup everything off of it , problem is windows doesn't load with it plugged in.
As soon as i press the power button the hdd clicks once , then for 10 seconds or so the computer idles , finally the bios detects the drives and then the windows loading starts. Obviously enough my windows installation is on a new hard drive which works on it's own but when i have both drives plugged in , windows loading just stops with a clicking sound. I only managed to load windows once in about 20-30 attempts , and that was sheer luck. So , i got this GetDataBack data recovery program , problem is i can't get in windows to execute it.
My question is this : Is there some other software suite which would do the whole data recovery before loading windows ? Or is there some workaround for my problem so i can actually get into windows and do my data saving ?
- Got lucky again , and windows booted up. I'm saving my stuff with GetDataBack as we speak , in between little clicks that make the program freeze for about 30seconds . Oh well , hope i get to backup all my shit.
Extra info: Both drives are on SATA , the new drive is a Samsung 1TB drive. I'm using windows 7 and the startup recovery option doesn't load either ( clicking sound during loading ). Tried changing cables , SATA ports , everything i could think of
I used Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery v3 when i dropped my external HDD by accident, managed to recover probably 90% of what was there.
Since it was around 600GB of stuff in there it took quite a while, though.
boundle (thoughts on cracking AITD) wrote:
i guess thouth if without a legit key the installation was rolling back we are all fucking then
I managed to copy about 14 GB out of nearly 180 :\ Everything else just says - i/o error ' unknown error (23) reading sector bla bla bla on hdbla bla - do you want to continue - and if i hit yes it just skips said file , which is about 90% of my data >,>
Will try the program tonizito mentioned next. Wish me luck ^_^
After more attempts of getting the windows to boot up and recognize the drive , it started working. I don't know what i did wrong / right , i don't know how long this will keep up , what i do know is that it's not longer clicking and no longer hanging up the system and i have managed to back up my entire 180 gb hard drive.
as said, use an usb plug or hotplug the sata drive in to get it working, but don't use any software directly with the drive
just dd a copy of the ENTIRE drive, put the faulty drive on a shelf and work on the image only
any act you do on the drive will only damage it further
i haven't tried stellar phoenix' software but i've had a lot of luck with active@ file recovery myself in several hd cases
(don't bother with the demo off the site.. you can find a portable cracked copy on some torrents that is like 1M)
The problem with building an image of the drive and copying stuff straight off the drive was the same , and that was the silly clicking which would make my hdd idle for random intervals and hang my computer, and would've made the process take a shitload of time. Thankfully though , for some unknown reason , the hdd started working on it's own just long enough for me to save everything.
Tried it again last night , and the clicking appeared again. I didn't even move the hdd nor did i restart the computer in the meanwhile so , it's beyond me what got it working and what broke it again couple of hours later .
Thanks for all the replies , once again , guys. The problem got solved , but if someone has any ideas regarding the possible cause of the clicking ( other than imminent hard disk failure ), i wouldn't mind having an extra 200gb working drive
Oh , i did that already during the 4-5 hours the hdd was working flawlessly , and it formated just fine. Windows check disk said some errors were found but fixed, nothing concrete. After a couple more hours while the disk was empty , it started clicking again and hanging the system.
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