OK so I just noticed that one of my parents Time Machine drives has failed. my mom sent me an email about it almost 4 months ago but I never paid attention to it. Anyways the drive is clicking and spinning up and then spinning back down over and over. It's probably been doing this non stop for about 4 months is it too late (probably). but I'd be interested and trying some data recovery options. So stogie what do you use? I have access to Mac and all flavors of Windows for this project.

You're fucked! sorry!

DAMN!

Uh.... Seriously I use EnCase (Guidance Software) or Forensic Toolkit (Access Data), but neither of those are going to do you much good.

If attached to a different computer, does the drive recognize in Device Manager at all?

I don't even know what king of files does Time Machine create? .CAB? .TM? .FUMS?

If it recognizes when connected to a different machine, just copy the files off.

If not, you can try some of the commercial data recovery stuff, but I have never used it, so other folks here would be a better reference for suggestions.

If it doesn't spin, let me know and I can walk you through the freezer method. There is actually a specific way to do this so as not to eff up the drive completely.

Honestly, I look at data in a way that 'allows' me to see deleted and corrupted stuff, but data recovery is a byproduct of what I do.

Wait, if this is a time machine drive, and the original OS drive is working OK, just replace the time machine drive, since you don't need the backups it contains.

What the F!! It's working now!!! I plugged it into the the Macbook and turn it on and it recognizes it!! I did shake it a little bit while it was off maybe I knocked some sense into it? This probably won't last long. My mom did say that she wasn't always getting the time machine backup failed message just sometimes. I didn't know drives could be intermittent like this I thought they either worked or they didn't.

I know I don't need the data but I want to practice with some data recovery techniques that way when I need I'll know more about what I'm doing.

Here is the only technique you need:

www.TLSI.net

Get out your checkbook.

Tell Eddie or John I said hi.

UUMMM no... I'm not paying someone else to recover the data, I want to do it myself. What techniques do they use, besides clean room stuff?

Most places will check the device for physical integrity (or assume none from the initial intake).

If the drive is bad, they will do a sector by sector copy. If it's good, they will scan all sectors for a file system that can be repaired.

If no good/repairable file system, the will scan the sectors for known file headers and carve the contiguous data from the header to the footer (or a designated amount if no footer is found).

If the file system is trashed and the second copy of the file directory (FAT, MFT, etc.) is also trashed, the success rate depends a lot on the fragmentation status of the volume, since scans generally only find contiguous clusters belonging to a file.

Any tool you get from download.com will try to automate these tasks. Success or failure with over the counter tools has less to do with the tool and more to do with the state of the data on the drive.

Do a simple quick format of a drive and shut it off and I can have your data back in under a minute. Try thirty different recovery programs and MMMV.

now how come i didnt get help like this when i said my HD died

Well, I really haven't helped him at all, just explained a process he can't really do himself.

well at least you attempted something, where as where i posted i guess because the guy lost so much porn, no one noticed my post.

interesting site my man. One question though, they only have IDE and SCSCI. Where's sata? I work with a few hard drive crashes and didnt know about this hardware vs software crash. I just find it odd that a hard drive can sometime work and not work. Worst thing for me is when customer have power outage.

Trust me, they handle Sata, SAS, Tape, anything you can dig up, they can handle.

Even one of these?

I meant in their basic troubleshooting step.

That's the first 1gB hard drive! I wonder what the access time was on that thing? What was it's RPM? Now with can fit 240gb into a drive 1.8inches across!!

Here's the article that was with the pic:

Ahem.... Let me rephrase.

stogie, i just realized that i have the 2 hard drives that i combined into that one hard drive that died on me, sure it wont have all my files, but at least it would have maybe 80%?

anyways do you think its possible to recover the data off them? i moved the data from both of those drives into the 1 500gb drive. and what software do you suggest i use?

Sure, what was wrong with the two hard drives? Were they independent drives or RAID drives?

did u check the flux capacitor to see if it was grounded properly?

they were independent drives, i just replaced them with 1 bigger drive because i was running out of hard drive space and had no more room in my case.

I think of all the things in a computer nowadays, hard drives are still the
most 'mechanical' and can get flaky just like any other piece of moving
machinery.

Computers should become crazy reliable if solid state drives ever become
the norm.

And no, ticking hard drives = certain death. We have some here at work which are making bad noises, and it's just a matter of time. Don't put anything important on it!

- Frank

try this

so what software do you recommend i try to try and recover the data, since i havent used the drives since, so im guessing the data should still be there.

I guess I don't understand why the data need to be "recovered"... If the drives function OK, and you were able to copy the data you needed off to a single 500 GB HDD, what happened to the two smaller drives that requires recovering? Did you format them? Are they now corrupted so that they do not appear in Device Manager?

I moved the data from those drives to the other, hence they are empty right now. Shouldnt the data still be on the platters thou?

damn, the data recovery tool i got with my Extreme III Compact flash cards wont work with hard drives

Yes, as long as you didn't use the drives for new data after completing the move operation.

Windows understands your Drag and Drop from one volume to another as a Copy operation followed by a Delete (bypass Recycle Bin) operation, so the data should be intact in unallocated space, as long as nothing new was written to the drive that would overwrite the old, deleted data.

I wish I had a good recommendation on a commercial program to recover stuff, but I don't generally use the tools that "just do stuff", as I need to be able to know exactly 'what' the tool is doing before it does it when it comes to recovering files.

how about the software from seagate?

http://services.seagate.com/diysoftware.aspx

???

It sounds like it will work, since it appears to access unallocated "or have deleted important files or directories from your Recycle Bin." There may be free programs that work as well, but if you just want to see what the drive looks like, it would be fun to play with it in the demo version. Not sure I would pay $129 for it...

If I wasn't on the road for the next few days, and totally jammed up at work, I would just do it for you, but I cannot even see the surface of the water I am drowning in right now...

sorry to hear about your work, but yea i ed it. so hopefully it works.

ill try it out on an even older HD first.

got so many of those bad boys lying around.

2x 100gb, 20gb, 250gb, 160gb

I smell a DROBO in your future!

whats a drobo?

:search: AZ and all will be answered.

It's like a ReadyNAS but with a far less extensive hardware compatibility list and a lower price tag.