Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Recovering from Hard Drive Disaster

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Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 12-21-2003, 06:32 PM:

My hard drive recently crashed. If any of you have ever had that happen, you know how much it sucks. But what sucks even more is this: For some reason, not one but both of my backup CD's are now coasters. So now I have lost everything. I have a few questions for anyone out there who might have any experience with this sort of thing. I know that it is possible to recover data in some cases from a bad hard drive. Where would I go to have this done and how much would it cost? (I wouldn't even consider it if I had my backups.) Also, is there any way to recover data from a bad CD-R? (Yes, they are CD-R's not RW's.)

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 12-21-2003, 06:48 PM:

I know somebody who got data recovered from a hard drive. I can look into it if nobody here comes up with a link.

Caution: Data recovery turned out to be an expensive pay-by-the hour situation and, when the budget had run out, they still did not have everything they wanted off that drive.

Advice for the future -- just back up to another hard drive. That's what I have taken to doing. My computers do it automatically and they never ask me to insert a CD-R.

Sorry this happened to you.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-21-2003, 06:49 PM:

Did you get the el cheapo CD-R's? They don't last very long, especially when burned at the ridiculously high speeds that drives today burn at.

Depending on what is wrong with the drive, it can be possible to recover data. If it is the drive motor or something similar that died, then you are in luck. You can simply have the platters moved to a different drive or copied with some extreme measure. I have no idea how much it would cost to do this. If the data on the drive itself became messed up, then you is outta luck, unfortunately.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-21-2003, 08:49 PM:

Ouch! That sucks.

You might be able to read the CD-Rs in some drives but not others. Try them in as many different CD drives as possible. You might get lucky and find one that works. Joe's right--the cheapo CD-Rs are a bad choice for backups. Get a tape drive or at least use decent CD-R blanks (Taiyo Yuden and Mitsumi are both good), keep multiple versions of your backups, and verify them regularly.

Commercial data recovery services are usually at least partially effective at recovering lost data from bad disks, etc., but they aren't cheap (think multiple thousands of dollars). If you have any thought of possibly using one of these services, DO NOT attempt to write any data to the bad disk and DO NOT attempt any homebrew data recovery methods first. You may destroy any possibility of success from the commercial service.

Good luck. You'll need it.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 12-21-2003, 09:08 PM:

If they were a Direct CD format by one company or another's software and the CD's were not closed or locked, they still should be able to be read my another CD burner that used the same software.

However, a direct CD format by Adaptec will not recognize a direct CD burned with Nero or vice versa. I think that sucks, too.

Don't throw away your coasters just yet. There still may be hope kinda like what Scott said.

I don't know if this fits your problem, but I hope it helps.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 12-21-2003, 09:49 PM:

I agree with what the others are saying about the backup CDs being playable in other drives/software. Try it.

I used to go the CD route for backup, but now I use 2 external Maxtor 160 & 200 Gig hard drives. I find this more convenient and much faster.

I keep one hidden here at home in case someone steals my computers. The other I keep at my parents house in case this place burns down or leveled in an earthquake.

>>> Phil

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-21-2003, 10:25 PM:

There are utilities you can buy that can attempt to recover data from bad CD-R discs. I have one CD (written to in Direct CD format but not closed) that was messed up in the write process. This was a disc made during the time a hard drive was dying in my PC. I've kept the CD around in case I came across a utility that might be able to reconstruct the binary data written on the disc. So far I haven't had much luck, particularly with anything affordable unfortunately.

I'm now a firm believer in making numerous backups to CD, along with storing critical data off on hard drives separate from the boot hard disc. Your master boot hard disc gets the most wear and tear by far, and would be the most likely one to clamp up and fail. So it would stand to reason that your data would be much safer stored on different physical drives and even mirrored on other removable discs. It costs more money, but if your data is valuable then it may be a worthwhile investment.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-21-2003, 10:46 PM:

What are we talking about when you say "Crash"?

Seized spindle? Crashed Head? Crunched sectors? OR simply corupted data?

If it's a spindle lock or a head crash you're screwed unless you want to pay "Drive Savers", et. al. to recover. (Assuming you want to pay.) Crunched sectors and corrupted data MAY be recoverable with programs like "Tech-Tool", "Disk Warrior" or "Norton".

Try booting from a CD or secondary HD. Try removing the drive and installing it into another computer as a slave drive. If/when you get it to mount, the first thing you should try to do is copy that sucker off to some other drive/media.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 12-21-2003, 11:52 PM:

OK, what I mean by crash is this: My computer wouldn't boot one day last week. Windows couldn't find some file that it needed. My roomate took a look at it (he's a computer tech for a living) and he said probablly the partiton table took a dump. We took that drive out and he put it in his computer, but it showed up as a blank drive. At that point I figured the only thing I could do was repartion and reformat the drive, but neither fdisk nor Windows XP setup will partion it. Something is wrong with the drive. Whether it's a crashed head, bad spindle, or corrupted data, I don't know.

I use Roxio Direct CD for writing CD-R's, and the media I used were AT&T brand 80min/700MB 1X-40X compatible CD-R's. While I don't use a second hard drive to back up my data, I do maintain two sets of backups. I find it really strange that neither disc is readable. As far as trying other drives, I have tried both my CD-R and my CD-ROM drive (the disc should be readable in the CD-ROM if it was closed properly) and my roomates CD-R. Just like the hard drive, the CD showed up blank on his computer

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-22-2003, 08:25 AM:

The last version of Direct CD I saw (which is going back 3-4 years at least) wrote the discs in UDF format (as distinct from the ISO9660 format used for most CD-ROMs). Any pre-XP operating system will not read UDF 'out of the box' (although I think one of the later service packs for 2000 added this capability) and needs extra software installing. You can download a UDF reader from Roxio's website, which, assuming this is a software problem rather than your drive being physically unable to read the data from the discs, will enable UDF CDs to be read normally from within Windows (e.g. through Windows Explorer).

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-22-2003, 08:36 AM:

That's SORT OF good news, I guess.

If it was a seized spindle or a crashed head, the drive wouldn't run at all. The platters are turning and the heads are trying to find data but failing. Much of the data should still be there, on the drive, but not accessible by normal means. Sounds like a blown directory or something.

I can't tell you much about Windows disk formatting but if the drive was formatted in HFS (Mac format) I'd say you still have a ghost of a chance... at least enough of a chance that you ought to try to extract the data.

There are programs for the Mac, "Tech Tool", "Disk Warrior" and "Drive X" that attempt to extract the data from bad drives and in some cases can repair them, even. I don't see why there wouldn't be similar programs for PC drives. Doesn't "Norton" have something like that?

The way I figure it, you're in a no-lose situation. Unless you want to spend big bux to send the unit to "Drive Savers", your disk drive is toast, no? Anything you try to do to extract the data youself can only succeed or fail. If you succeed, you're back in business. If you fail you haven't lost anything.

What's "Norton", (et. al.) cost? Like, $100.00? It'd be a good investment for the future if nothing else.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-22-2003, 09:23 AM:

Data recovery services are quite expensive, it's a skilled labour-intensive business, and Data tend to have a high value, so people are prepared to pay a high price for recovery. It would probably be possible to recover most of the data from your hard disk, but at a price.

I've lost a couple of CDRs, out of many hundreds written, but most don't get kept for more than a few years at most. They seem to be a bit like nitrate film, they can last for many years, and be fine; or they can be totally useless in a much shorter time. I have seen very cheap discs which are fine, and expensive ones which have failed, under the same storage conditions.

I would avoid packet writing software like Direct CD for making backups, actually I hardly ever use it for anything. I also avoid writing multi-session CDs. We once had a student who had written several sessions to a CD at home, with what software I don't know, and then asked one of our staff to add a few files in another session. I wouldn't have touched it, but he did. The result of this exercise was that the last session, but none of the files in it, was the only thing that was readable. After several hours, we managed to get the files back, and written onto a new CD. It is now departmental policy, that we do not add files, either in sessions or by packet writing to students' existing CDs. If we write to a new CD and something goes wrong then we haven't lost anything, we just do it again.

By far the most reliable way of writing to a CD is to use the 'Disc at once' format. Blanks are cheap enough now. (The first one I bought, many years ago, cost me 17 pounds! I'm paying less than 1% of that now.

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 01-03-2004, 05:20 PM:

OK from bitter experience I would not advise CD back-up's. With the cost of hard drives being so low its easier, quicker and more reliable to use hard disk.

I always use Norton Ghost. Its a dos based utility so its easy to run and quite fast for restoring, same goes for backing up.

Ther's not the problem of having to have a boot disc with CD drivers etc and being dos its very stable!

The problem with using Windows based Back-up is that its slow and therefore we tend to put off doing a backup as a result.

Using a hrad disc give you the ability to keep 3, 4 or 5 back-ups quickly and reliably.

I can also recomend Drive Image as a backup utility.... but for full system back-ups I would avoid using CD's or DVD's for that matter. They are Great when they work but not to be relied upon.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-05-2004, 04:03 AM:

My experience with writable optical media is that in the short term at least, 'write once' discs are now pretty reliable. For three or four years now I have not had one fail on me - even no-name cheap ones - unless either there is physical damage (e.g. it's scratched) or a software issue (e.g. Windows NT can't read UDF). I have experienced compatibility problems with rewritable media, but not write-once discs.

Long-term storage of optical media is, of course, a different kettle of fish. It is a hugely controversial topic among media archivists: research is going on all the time, and different experts disagree with each other over many of these issues. But for short-term backup purposes I've now got to the stage where I more-or-less 'trust' CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, just as long as they're burnt 'disc as once' and (if they don't contain any files bigger than 2gb) in ISO9660 format. I'm sure it'll end up being a case of famous last words, though... [Roll Eyes]