(Samuel9590) 1

I have heard of people being able to recover data from a hard drive that has failed. I was wondering how do you do this? Is it a piece of software that you hook up a broken hard drive to a working computer to scan? This could be very useful to recover data from client computers that no longer boot.

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When you find it please let me know - We just spent a lot of money with a professional recovery outfit on recovering a raid array!

In any case, I very much doubt the process would be anything like automatic, and will need a great deal of knowledge about disk hardware and file systems.

Good luck!

==EDIT== P.S. This was no use to me but it might be of use to you - some very useful tips about recovery here How to Recover a Dead Hard Disk: 9 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow

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There are basically two choices for data recovery. Software and hardware. Hardware means sending the drive out to a company that specializes in data recovery. Some will partner with you, giving you discounts and possibly a commission.

For software there are a lot of options out there. If you want something to do all the work for you, you might be interested in Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional v11. Whatever you choose, never, ever, boot a failing drive. Don’t do anything that might be able to write to the drive, ever.

Don’t forget, though, that if a drive has physical damage you can cause it to get worse every time you apply power.

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If the drive clicks or grinds, you have no chance of doing it yourself. The more you try on a drive with mechanical failures, the less chance you have of getting data off it as it damages itself more and more. If it’s just bad sectors, something like Ontrack or Data Rescue may be able to pull it off. But mechanical failures, you need to send it out to somewhere like Drivesavers. They do great work, and if you know exactly what you want and they can’t recover it, it’s no charge.

Solutions like that aren’t cheap (Most of the times I used Drivesavers, clients paid between $700 and $2000 for their data, and were usually above $1k). Only once were they not able to recover anything.

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I know there are places you can send drives with mechanical failures. I was wondering if anyone knew what they do, how they do it, and if its possible to do it at a home lab with out spending an arm and leg for tools.

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Absolutely not. Taking apart a drive, with any hopes of decent data recovery, requires a clean room.

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Larry’s got it right. If the data’s worth anything to you, don’t attempt invasive recoveries yourself.

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I’m guessing a clean room is a vacuum room where they only allow air through specific sources to make sure nothing effects the drive correct?

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Not a vacuum, but otherwise pretty much what you said.

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Wonder if you could recreate a clean room in just a box with glove insert to be able to move things while not introducing new substances for a cheaper price.

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For cheaper than a whole clean room, sure. But what are you going to do in that box? You need all sorts of other tools and parts to actually do something with a drive once you’ve opened it.

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I guess at that point it would be cheaper and more efficient just to hire someone for that.

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Technicians at class 100 clean room carefully evaluate and treat the problem drives. They’ve highly skilled equipment’s and tools to bring the dead hard drive back to life which simply isn’t possible for someone to do it.

P.S. I’ve personally visited the class room once and the whole thing more looks like a laboratory where not a single part of dust could exist. For more details, you can see this video of Stellar Data Recovery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooBGG7RoSOc

@Stellar

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Here’s a list of recovery software. This is exactly what the data recovery store you take it to would run against the drive. Prob worth buying software to recover data anyways.

http://data-recovery-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

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a failed drive can be many things

  1. logic board failure. you need to find the EXACT logic board with the SAME firmware to even attempt to read the drive

  2. drive controller. again, EXACT same drive controller, SAME firmware

  3. hard drive motor, bearings - MAY be able to pull apart and fix. but see above comments about a clean room

  4. platter damage due to heads bouncing on them. Umm, good luck

  5. heads failed. combination of 1 - 4

so while a HDD TECHNICALLY is quite simple, in reality there are so many variables that a slight variance can cause not being able to read the data. you could still see the 1’s and 0’s, but that’s like giving you some pulped newsprint and suggesting getting the story off page 4 intact and readable. Nonsense!

and of course lets not mention the time required to find out you have failed and try next plan.

this is why data recovery experts tend to charge a small fortune for what they do - it requires a lot of equipment, and knowledge, to even attempt recovering data

failed hard drive - should have had a backup. No backup - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (from someone who has lost data three times in last 20 years, so no, I’m not suggesting i am perfect either, I have learnt things the hard way also)

Oh, and lets not even mention complications when RAID comes into play!