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  3. Need to recover a Harddrive.

Need to recover a Harddrive.

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  • R rnbergren

    Anyone used TestDisk or DiskInternals? SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

    To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

    X Offline
    X Offline
    xiecsuk
    wrote on last edited by
    #24

    I bought a file recovery program from Seagate which managed to recover over 90% of a file that held a backup copy of my data disk. The data disk had been reformatted and I had deleted the copy file by mistake. It held hundreds of photos, many documents and other important information. I tried a number of free file recovery programs. None of them found many files at all. But the Seagate File Recovery program found most of the files.

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    • R rnbergren

      Anyone used TestDisk or DiskInternals? SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

      To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

      S Offline
      S Offline
      synp
      wrote on last edited by
      #25

      Can't you contact the NSA and ask them for their latest copy of your data?

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      • M Mycroft Holmes

        99.9% of photos I have are of interest only to me and the family, why should I care if they are hacked. The .1% would not be backed up to the cloud!. I just bought in to the Office 365 eco system, PC died, so I get 1tb on MS servers, all my music and pictures are now backed up to the cloud. Not sure what to do about the documents I don't want out there!

        Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH

        P Offline
        P Offline
        Pualee
        wrote on last edited by
        #26

        Digital photos contain GIS information. If you give me enough photos, I can track your behavior, even without your social media posts... It kind of opens up the door for being victimized. I have no idea, or trust for the cloud to strip this out. In fact, I bet they consume it as meta data for advertising. And even without that information, some people who are closer to me could figure out the same info just from viewing the picture.

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        • S synp

          Can't you contact the NSA and ask them for their latest copy of your data?

          R Offline
          R Offline
          rnbergren
          wrote on last edited by
          #27

          Best Answer yet. I do have a nephew who works for something like that. He won't tell me. I bet he has a copy.

          To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

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          • R rnbergren

            Anyone used TestDisk or DiskInternals? SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

            To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

            T Offline
            T Offline
            theUPSFlash
            wrote on last edited by
            #28

            I recently used PhotoRec which is part of the TestDisk install (on a recent version of Ubuntu). It got everything back that I was concerned with (and then some... even a bunch of files from a previous install on the drive). The drive was NTFS formatted and the partition just vanished. It had been converted to an external drive and was fine on one plug in and the next it was inaccessible. I was very impressed. I had to comb through thousands and thousands of files to find the ones I needed, but I believe you can give it more information to only recover specific files. If I had been more calm at the time, I would have taken more time with the parameters to get fewer files but it wasn't too bad as it splits them up into subdirectories. TestDisk couldn't get the partition back but PhotoRec recovered what I needed. -mark

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            • R rnbergren

              Anyone used TestDisk or DiskInternals? SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

              To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

              D Offline
              D Offline
              davecasdf
              wrote on last edited by
              #29

              (If you've any reason to suspect physical failure, dup it first. ) TestDisk ( on the System Rescue Disk ) will do a good job of finding - recovering "lost" partitions; if that's the problem.

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              • R rnbergren

                Anyone used TestDisk or DiskInternals? SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

                To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

                M Offline
                M Offline
                Murray Whipps
                wrote on last edited by
                #30

                Don't know where you live, of course but here in Phoenix there's a company called Data Doctors that has been able to scrape data off very badly damaged disks for me. Apparently they can disassemble the disk and read the platter. There's probably a group like them in your area. I have never given them an SSD so...? And no, I don't work for them :) Murray

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                • R rnbergren

                  basically a brick. Except when I attach it to an adaptor and hook up to another computer it recognizes the harddrive and then asks if I want to format it?

                  To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

                  P Offline
                  P Offline
                  patbob
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #31

                  There's not much you can do with a fried SSD. I'd recommend a SATA-USB, but it sounds like you've already done that. Put it in a Linux machine and see if you can use dd to do a surface copy into a file on another drive. Then try and see what can be done with that. You might be lucky and find that the only problem is that some early sectors got overwritten, like maybe the partition table. However, if its from a recent 8.1 windows machine (one that came with 8.1 preinstalled), then the data is encrypted and you're SOL even if you can read it off the drive from another computer, so there's no point wasting your time.

                  We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.

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                  • P Pualee

                    Digital photos contain GIS information. If you give me enough photos, I can track your behavior, even without your social media posts... It kind of opens up the door for being victimized. I have no idea, or trust for the cloud to strip this out. In fact, I bet they consume it as meta data for advertising. And even without that information, some people who are closer to me could figure out the same info just from viewing the picture.

                    M Offline
                    M Offline
                    Mycroft Holmes
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #32

                    Pualee wrote:

                    I bet they consume it as meta data for advertising

                    Yah so I can expect a flood of travel adds and how to annoy your grand kids. I already get more travel crap than I can handle and while I am quite proficient at annoying the little terrors, new ideas are always needed.

                    Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH

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                    • M Mark_Wallace

                      rnbergren wrote:

                      SSD drive

                      Eek. Be prepared for the worst. An HDD has physical magnetic discs that can be read, even if there's damage. An SSD is essentially a memory card, so there's nothing physical to recover data from.

                      I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

                      C Offline
                      C Offline
                      Charles Programmer
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #33

                      Well, like the spinning HD, SSDs have controllers that can be replaced with the right technology. Just because there's no rust, doesn't mean "there's nothing physical to recover data from."

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                      • P PIEBALDconsult

                        rnbergren wrote:

                        off of it badly

                        Then any tool should suffice?

                        C Offline
                        C Offline
                        Charles Programmer
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #34

                        A hammer's a tool. It is, it is. A hammer is really a tool. Maybe I'm a tool... ;)

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                        • D dandy72

                          rnbergren wrote:

                          SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

                          Some people still swear by SpinRite, even with SSDs.

                          P Offline
                          P Offline
                          PIEBALDconsult
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #35

                          SpinRite FTW! :badger:

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                          • M Murray Whipps

                            Don't know where you live, of course but here in Phoenix there's a company called Data Doctors that has been able to scrape data off very badly damaged disks for me. Apparently they can disassemble the disk and read the platter. There's probably a group like them in your area. I have never given them an SSD so...? And no, I don't work for them :) Murray

                            P Offline
                            P Offline
                            PIEBALDconsult
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #36

                            Murray Whipps wrote:

                            here in Phoenix

                            Pssst... http://www.codeproject.com/Members/Tosche-Station[^]

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                            • S synp

                              Can't you contact the NSA and ask them for their latest copy of your data?

                              C Offline
                              C Offline
                              Charles Programmer
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #37

                              If they actually performed a service like that, then people like myself, (well if there are people like myself,) might not be so paranoid and resentful of them. Unfortunately, I believe we pay them for way more than just this kind of service, but receive nothing we value in return... not even the safety they claim to be providing us. It's just a way to take money, ideas, privacy and dignity from us.

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                              • R rnbergren

                                Anyone used TestDisk or DiskInternals? SSD drive went all bad and I need some stuff off of it badly.

                                To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

                                J Offline
                                J Offline
                                jmussetter
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #38

                                If it's an SSD, good luck. This is one of the main reasons I haven't moved to SSD drives yet, and if/when I do, they will only be for OS and program loading, and not for data storage. The problem is the way NAND memory works and the fact that the data doesn't stay permanently there if the drive has issues. I'm not sure if tools have improved much, but the last I've read (a couple years ago when the drives were getting popular), there wasn't a fool proof way to rebuild the file system when it get's corrupted. The data stored on a SSD isn't segmented into partitions and sectors like a normal drive, so when things get corrupted, the data is randomly stored all over the place without a way to rebuild the links (if it's there at all). With a normal platter based drive, I've had good luck with mounting in another computer to pull data off, or using a Linux boot CD to boot to linux and mount the drive to perform data recovery. I don't think either of these methods will work for a SSD.

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                                • P PIEBALDconsult

                                  SpinRite FTW! :badger:

                                  D Offline
                                  D Offline
                                  dandy72
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #39

                                  PIEBALDconsult wrote:

                                  SpinRite FTW!

                                  I can't quite make up my mind about SpinRite. Steve Gibson's technical explanations make sense, and the testimonies on his Security Now podcast all sound legit enough (I have no reason to doubt his sincerity), but I've always had less than stellar luck with it almost every time I've had a need for it. I *did* have it recover data, but I've also had it stuck on a particular spot on a hard drive for a solid week without making any progress. That being said, when people are ready to give up on a dying hard drive, it's still the first thing I recommend as there's nothing comparable out there. Any personal experiences?

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                                  • D dandy72

                                    PIEBALDconsult wrote:

                                    SpinRite FTW!

                                    I can't quite make up my mind about SpinRite. Steve Gibson's technical explanations make sense, and the testimonies on his Security Now podcast all sound legit enough (I have no reason to doubt his sincerity), but I've always had less than stellar luck with it almost every time I've had a need for it. I *did* have it recover data, but I've also had it stuck on a particular spot on a hard drive for a solid week without making any progress. That being said, when people are ready to give up on a dying hard drive, it's still the first thing I recommend as there's nothing comparable out there. Any personal experiences?

                                    P Offline
                                    P Offline
                                    PIEBALDconsult
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #40

                                    dandy72 wrote:

                                    Steve Gibson's

                                    dandy72 wrote:

                                    Any personal experiences?

                                    He spoke at a computer club meeting I attended in the early 90s. He had been having some trouble adjusting to the new era of Windows (3). He always developed in Assembly, but everyone said you had to use C++. Well, he showed them and by golly he wrote a Windows (3) screen saver in Assembly! Freaking genius! It was just an exercise of course and he gave out free copies. I think I still have my copy. I have never used SpinRite, never needed to. The only time I needed to recover data (Pascal code and a couple of reports from college) I wrote my own recovery tool.

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                                    • P PIEBALDconsult

                                      dandy72 wrote:

                                      Steve Gibson's

                                      dandy72 wrote:

                                      Any personal experiences?

                                      He spoke at a computer club meeting I attended in the early 90s. He had been having some trouble adjusting to the new era of Windows (3). He always developed in Assembly, but everyone said you had to use C++. Well, he showed them and by golly he wrote a Windows (3) screen saver in Assembly! Freaking genius! It was just an exercise of course and he gave out free copies. I think I still have my copy. I have never used SpinRite, never needed to. The only time I needed to recover data (Pascal code and a couple of reports from college) I wrote my own recovery tool.

                                      D Offline
                                      D Offline
                                      dandy72
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #41

                                      I used to be in the camp that thought Steve Gibson was a quack. After listening to his podcast, it's obvious the guy's no fool.

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