My computer stopped working the other day, so we took it to the computer repair place. He declared the boot drive dead, and obsolete (IDE, which isn’t hardly available per him) So I bought a new computer, and he said that he would move what files he could.
Then he told me that he was not able to get data from either drive.
(I could believe that one drive failed, but both? At the same time?)
I took it to a company that specialized in data recovery, but they wanted $$$$$ for it, which I can’t afford.
So dopers, help me out. I’m reasonably computer literate (though not that great at hardware). What can I do myself to get the files back?
For the inevitable responses:
Yes, I should have had up to date backups - my most recent backup is two years old, so I haven’t lost that much, but there are a number of projects that are only the the hard drives - and I don’t know where they are.
I don’t want to take them anywhere else - in my price range, it becomes a toss-up as to whether they can actually get any files or whether they screw the drive in the meantime.
[ul]
[li]IDE drives are still available.[/li][li]You can get an external hard drive enclosure, install your old drive and connect it to your new computer.[/li][li]If you are a bit tech savvy and just want to check older drives, you can use one of these to check individual drives to connect to your new computer.[/li][/ul]
In today’s market, IDE is pretty much dead, and it would not surprise me if the “computer repair” area of a department store didn’t have an IDE to SATA or IDE to USB adapter.
Have you confirmed that the shop attempted and failed to access any data, or if they just can’t do it?
If the drives are unreadable when connected to a working computer (either via USB converter or their native interface), there are two possible remedies available to mere mortals:
If the drive controller board (the onboard PCB) is suspected to be faulty, it can be replaced - find a working exact duplicate of the drive (ebay) - it has to be the same brand, model, capacity etc. The board is connected to the internals of the drive via several ribbon conectors and maybe one or two molex-type connectors - swapping it out is a delicate job, but not impossible.
This will only work if the internals of the drive are still in full working order.
If the main bearing of the drive is suspected faulty (i.e. it makes grinding noises or something), the drive may be sealed in several layers of plastic, then cooled in a domestic freezer, after which it may run for long enough to retrieve essential files.
Either of these methods also runs the risk of making things worse - causing damage that could make it harder for a professional to retrieve the contents.
drives often show problems before dying as well as sometimes die suddenly. you can get devices that plug in the USB and read IDE drives, you don’t need an enclosure for a one (few) time use. these can be had in the $20 range. i would try a self or geek friend recovery.
When you say two drives, do you mean two physical, separate hard drives? Or just one drive partitioned via software into two virtual drive letters (C and D)? If it’s a software partitioned drive, even if the bootable portion becomes hopelessly ‘un-bootable’, if connected as a second drive to a working computer you should be able to see both partitions and copy files from them.
If you get a converter, make sure it’s bidirectional. A lot of them, especially the cheaper ones tend to be made just for converting IDE CD drives and might be read only. Even so, a bidirectional model should be less than $40-50. That’s just a search on ‘ide usb converter’ but will give you a place to start. (note: number of golden eggs indicates user rating–more is obviously better). You can also search on IDE to SATA converters. What I said above about being bidirectional mainly applies here, not so much to USB adapters I don’t think.
Get something like this: IDE/SATA to USB 2.0. It allows you to connect an IDE or SATA drive as a USB drive. I have this one and it works great. Assuming the drives still work, you would be able to hook them up to your computer and they would look like an external drive.
I’ve recovered everything but a few 100 MB off an otherwise dead drive using a linux tool called DDRescue. It will build an image of your drive and can do a lot of cool little tricks like trying to read sectors backwards. It can take multiple passes and skip over dead spots. Each pass adds to the image you create. The learning curve can be steep and it requires some patience but I’ve found it to be well worth the time I spent figuring it out.
You would need to set up a thumb drive or CD to boot into a linux distro, maybe Ubuntu, and either an enclosure or a computer with and IDE connector. If you need a SATA to IDE adapter the best price is probably going to be Monoprice.
Unless your drive is dead then as said above a drive caddy is a simple and cheap option.
I just bought two, one for my outgoing computer and one for my daughter’s dead machine.
Both work perfectly and cost £10 each from Amazon.
