hard drive failure

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zinneken

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My ibook this afternoon, while typing, suddenly started making noise at the hard disk ... I suspect something to be horribly wrong with my hard disk as booting from the CD doasn't bring up the HD to do repairs, same with Disk Warrior.

I have taken out the hard disk and mounted it into a firewire case, same problem here. Weird noise before the hard drive starts spinning normally, but doesn't mount and is not recognised, not even listed on the mac.

I have read on a forum some time ago about an application, command line application, that allows to get data back from failing hard drives (such as an application used to copy data from an ipod HD to a bigger HD to upgrade the ipod disk space). Where do I find such an application with which I can get my data back?
 
Data Rescue from ProSoft Engineering http://www.prosofteng.com/ is often successful at getting data off a drive even when it won't mount.

Another option I've used in the past is to seal up the drive in an anti-static bag, suck as much air out as possible, then stick it into the freezer for a while. I'm guessing this helps the metal bearing contract and allows the drive to spin up for a while -- at least until it gets warm again.

If you get it to mount after pulling it from the freezer, work quickly to get as much data off as possible. It may stop working while copying, so you'd have to repeat the process potentially a number of times before you get everything off that you need.

NOTE: You should retrieve you must crucial data first, because you might not succeed at getting it to work enough times to get everything.
 
Thanks for your suggestions - I tried both Drive Genius and Drive Rescue, neither of them finds the drive ...

Basically the drive when powering up sounds like trying to read something over and over again for a couple of seconds, then spins as it always has (same sound as when it working fine) and upon disconnecting I can hear the drive powering down / parking the heads.

What should I do? Anyone has had this before? Which utilities (command line or other) can get my data off this HD?

I currently have it mounted in an external firewire case as follows (system profiler information) ::
SYM13FW500-DISK DRIVE:

Manufacturer: LSI Logic
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0x1B703000003AA
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
SYM13FW500-DISK DRIVE Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0xA0B835
Sub-units:
SYM13FW500-DISK DRIVE SBP-LUN:
 
Data recovery is not 100%. Sometimes, you cannot recover anything at all, so in this case, you'd simply replace the hard drive with a new one and restore the data from the backup that you keep.

In cases where software-based data recovery doesn't work, your next option is professional data recovery -- which can run into the thousands of dollars depending on what they've gotta do to recover the data. www.drivesavers.com is a great company -- they're fast and good, and their prices are reasonable (and yes, one thousand dollars is a reasonable cost for recovering data off of a dead hard drive -- it just depends on how much the data is worth to you).

I would suggest simply purchasing a new hard drive (that'd be less than $200) and just using your backup that you keep to restore the data you need.
 
it sounds like a hardware failure. it may sound like its using the heads right, but i'd suspect that if it was opened, you'd see that the heads have crashed into the platers, which make the drive no good, even to try to pull info from. thats what i think the frist bads sounds you heard were, and why nothing is even seeing it, including your enclosure ( it should list your hd type here after the colon--> ''SYM13FW500-DISK DRIVE Unit:'' . but its blank, which means it doesn't even see that it has a hd in it.)
 
what about the unix tools I read about (but can't find the links of) ?

I once read a post somewhere on the net that allows to copy data off a disk that can't be seen by macos. it was a thread about how to upgrade your ipod to a bigger hard disk and how this hard disk should get data copied from places on the HD that the system can't see.
 
If you had a link to the post, or even the name of the command-line utilities, then we could investigate and see if they may be of some help -- but "someone told me about something" doesn't really help here.

The difference between the iPod thing you read about and your situation is that the iPod hard drive is in working condition -- yours is not. "Not being seen" by the computer can mean several different things -- in the case of the iPod, it's because the drive was not formatted in the native Mac OS format, and therefore was not "mounted" (but it was "seen" by the computer). In your case, the drive itself does not mount at all, and is not even recognized by the computer as being connected and powered on.

If DiskWarrior and Data Rescue X don't work, then I don't think that any command-line utility is going to work either -- I think you're stuck with a dead hard drive... as before, I think it would be the cheapest and easiest route to simply purchase a replacement drive, then restore the data from your backup(s).
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
If you had a link to the post, or even the name of the command-line utilities, then we could investigate and see if they may be of some help -- but "someone told me about something" doesn't really help here.

The difference between the iPod thing you read about and your situation is that the iPod hard drive is in working condition -- yours is not. "Not being seen" by the computer can mean several different things -- in the case of the iPod, it's because the drive was not formatted in the native Mac OS format, and therefore was not "mounted" (but it was "seen" by the computer). In your case, the drive itself does not mount at all, and is not even recognized by the computer as being connected and powered on.

If DiskWarrior and Data Rescue X don't work, then I don't think that any command-line utility is going to work either -- I think you're stuck with a dead hard drive... as before, I think it would be the cheapest and easiest route to simply purchase a replacement drive, then restore the data from your backup(s).
Click to expand...

If I would remeber the forum or the post where I read about these tools, be sure I would list them ... My memory is on my hard disk, so can't really get to it right now :(

The ipod thin - as far as I remember - was for ipod hard disks that had crashed and users wanting to get back as much as possible from the ipod HD before putting in a new one, making it work by copying the ipod system and other to the system invisible parts.

As for backups, a nightmare. I used to make backups weekly, and stopped in October last year. So unless I recover as much as possible from this disk I shall unfortunately ... have lost a great deal of files. I learned my lesson now, don't even trust a mac !
 
zinneken said:
I learned my lesson now, don't even trust a mac !
Click to expand...
Heh... well, considering that Apple does not manufacture hard drives, and the Macintosh itself in terms of hardware and/or software made by Apple probably didn't cause the hard drive to fail, that's a pretty broad statement...

...kinda like saying "I'll never trust Chevrolet again because my tire made by Pirelli went flat."
 
you hit it on that head el. the hd is not by apple. and like i said before, there is no sw that will let you get info off the hd if it can't be seen by anything. again, i bet the heads are in the platter, and not on the arms anymore. which means you'd be lucky if drivesavers can even get info off the drive. zinn your hd has suffured a major failure, like if your cd was cut in half. if anything can be saved, it can only be done by experts in data recovery. time to get a new hd, and start over, and backup more offten. i would get a new one from newegg.com. or you could do a want ad in the forum's classifieds for a laptop hd. but if you don't want to, i'm sure that there are many people here that would be happy to give you money for the laptop, just post in the classifieds.
 
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