External hard drive

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Would it be possible for physical damage to some critical spots manifest as a software problem. When connected to the desktop PC, it recognizes that something is there, eventually a icon pops up(simply noting *local drive E*) however when trying to open access, it either crashes windows, freezes up or eventually gives error message saying *format disk before use*. Can not bring to a official techie due to some rather sensitive material on.
If forced to do the format, any ways of at least backing the data up before-hand, granted it it still there?
Nearly 1TB worth of stuff.

[rockingmtranch]

Hook it up to a Linux box then you should be able to get the data off. You know how Windoze is about these things. Linux will treat it as raw data.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Interesting, will try that once we get a hold of a linux machine with enough storage space.
In the meanwhile, any other ideas?

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Okay, so we got it hooked up to a rig with linux. It recognizes that the drives existence but we are currently still stomped as to how we could extract the data. Could you perhaps give some more specific instructions.

[rockingmtranch]

If you can see the drive, you should be able to access the files. You can't see the files on the drive?

[DARK TEMPLAR]

The existence of the drive and proper name are recognized without any freezing or crashing (unlike with windows) but the drive itself is still inaccessible, first there was a *can not access drive* error upon closing which popped up some numbered error.
Anything we might be doing wrong.

[rockingmtranch]

No. You're not doing anything wrong. If it is damaged like, not spinning or the arm isn't able to move, then you won't be able to access the data because it physically cannot. The drive may want to allow access and just isn't capable. That is my guess and I personally don't know of anything else except data recovery services and they are dumb expensive. Doesn't hurt at this point if you want to open the drive and see what you see.

[rockingmtranch]

After you try reformatting that is. I don't know if it will reformat. If it does, something was seriously wrong for sure. Data corruption usually doesn't manifest itself so severely as to not allow access to the drive..

[rockingmtranch]

Any update? I found this: http://www.tvkim.com/watch/1518/kim-on- ... campaign=c Basically, you freeze the hard drive and it sometimes makes it work for a few minutes.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

A few minutes wouldn't do much good beyond seeing if the data is still there. At the time of malfunction over half of the 1.5T HD was full
My brother found some guy who might be able to help a bit buut well live and see.

[rockingmtranch]

Cool. Keep us posted.

[DARK TEMPLAR]

It would appear that even if we get the drive itself back to working order the data would still be lost.
Oh well c'est la vie

[rockingmtranch]

Hard drives don't like dying for sure. Have you tried the reformat?

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Aye, no dice though. Least through the desktop PC, will try through my laptop later, maybe it will yield a different result, unlikely though.

[rockingmtranch]

Don't give up. It's not a canoe anchor yet!

[DARK TEMPLAR]

On a bit unrelated matter, what is the 'boot menu' key for win Vista? Does not seem to be f12 as with XP.

[Nightwatch]

If you're trying to go to the menu at the start-up phase to choose from which hard disk or any other removable drive that the windows should start, then try pressing F8 (on some computers this may be F5, if the F8 doesn't work for you, then try F5)

But if you want to access the BIOS menu, then DEL should work.

[While on the subject, start-up options (safe mode, etc) can be arranged through entering msconfig into the RUN menu, the menu that is then called should give those option. ]

[DARK TEMPLAR]

Found some free time and some guts to pry open the hunk of junk.

Lift open the keyboard, move some wifi kagimafig a bit, disconnect, what by all assumptions based on the info my 'search fu' managed to dig up should be the bios battery.

Didn't take all that long, waiting a bit now and will try to put the thing back together in some 10 min.

ed: If i don't royally screw this up and it actually works instead of fubaring the hardware, I might just be the happiest person alive for a little bit ... I may have some tech savvyness but I am running purely on luck here.

ed2: Welp, procedure completed, thing boots up, as much as it can, which is the same as before, so back to square one.


GOD BLOODY DAMN IT

[rockingmtranch]

Don't give up