Hard Drive Problems 1.0

This is your update for hard drive problems. Sorry it's been so long. I've been a little busy with this one.
The Hard Disk I started with failed completely. I went back through everything I did and came up with a few tips on how to deal with this kind of problem. Here's a shopping list for you, along with some reasoning.

Absolutely, the main "given" rule is that you have your own (or a friend's) bootable machine running just fine (as in this spare machine is not the one being repaired).

First, Make sure you have a spare hard drive, preferably bigger than (But at least as big as) the hard drive you're repairing. This will come in handy. If your damaged drive has SMART technology embedded in the controller board and it is the hard drive that came with the computer, you can probably se a utility in the bios to check it out. This will tell you if the drive is failing. If it is a replacement of a hard drive or you built the machine, you'll need a driver cd with those utilities if the drive has SMART technology. If your hard drive doesn't have SMART, You're stuck with moving on to the next step before you know anything about any physical drive problems, which might adversely affect any recovery you attempt (in this case I recommend a local data recovery expert).

If you feel you can move on...

Next, you'll need a way to connect both the original (damaged) drive and the new one to a working machine. I recommend using enclosures, but some get better results from items like the "iConnect" device (simple ide\eide\ata\sata to usb converter), as the information is passed directly to the hard-drive control board ( you wont get any boost in data speed or transfer rate, but it is easier to locate problems). Once you have both of the drives connected, you need to set up the new hard drive to be written to. You may use any method you like. I use the XP computer manager(http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Partition-a-Hard-Drive-with-Windows-XP) to partition the drive with 1 partition (the same type as the damaged drive and bootable; might save a step later). Once this step is complete, you may want to do a write check. Move a small file of 1-5mb to and from the new drive. This will show you that the drive can be written to. Next, wipe this file from that drive by finding it there, moving it to the recycle bin ( i prefer secure wiping, as it will keep us from recovering it by accident later; http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-secure-erase-utility.htm ) and then empty the recycle bin.

Now that you have 1 clean disk ready for writing and 1 damaged disk ready for recovery, you need to make sure you don't lose anything. My favorite is the freeware XXCLONE. It will make a fully bootable copy of the disk (if the disk is still bootable). If you'd like a try with it: http://www.xxclone.com/
Just make sure to chose the damaged drive as the source, and the new drive as the destination. At this point, we want to be able to work with the files on a clean, undamaged disk. If there is a problem within windows, we'll find it before it destroys the old drive completely (though it is not adviseable to use the old drive as a bootable disk again, some people do and it works fine for a long time). Once you have the files on a new drive, you can play with them. But we are not finished. I recommend finding a hard drive imaging utility. Some are free, but the best ones are not. If you have a recovery software in mind, check to see if it will do hard drive imaging. Find a drive as big as your damaged one (cheap on ebay or amazon if you go with OEM drives) and then do an imaging of the damaged drive onto it (saving a file with the sector by sector information as a physical and logical reference). If there is a problem with any of the physical motors or arms in the drive, the utility will let you know after a few hours of reading the drive and spinning it slow. If it can't find an issue with the physical, we will move on to the logical, and still have something to use for a recovery without having to work (and possibly further damage) the damaged drive. Nice how that works out huh? Disconnect the damaged drive.

Now we test for viruses and narrow down the scope to just the cloned drive. We want to scan all files on this disk without running them, so doing it from an external environment saves us from possible invasion of rogueware, trojans, etc. If you don't find any viruses, you may wish to do a search by hand. First search "Application Data". You should find a default folder, and another folder for each user (Might be "Application Settings"). Search each one for folders with weird names ( or names of adware programs you no longer want in there; Weird meaning a mix of letters that don't spell anything) and put those folders through a recycle or secure delete. Then defrag the disk, and wipe the free space. If your problem stemmed from something hijacking windows (rogueware) it should be fixed, but you'll need an install disk that matches your windows install to repair windows and start running again. TO do this you'll need your install key. Download a keyfinder that can load an external windows folder (One example:http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/). If you use my suggested finder, you can go to options, load hive and select the "WINDOWS" folder on the cloned drive. There are no guarantees if rogueware has been fighting you. Your registry may already be too corrupted (such was the case recently for me). If you can get the key (if you havent lost it or if you were able to recover it) you can do a repair install of windows, which will restart the registry, and allow you to open all your programs in order to reload their main function keys that allow them to work. If you don't know how to do a repair install for your machine, look it up(unless you built the machine and installed retail windows; you'll either have to reinstall, or see if installer actually recognizes the original install and allows you to repair it. This can take about an hour.

If none of this helps, and windows is not bootable or continues to crash, The problem may still be file based. If it does work, you may have had physical HDD trouble. If you want to throw away the old drive, I suggest you first try and do a secure erase of it so that any personal information is unrecoverable. Some freeware is up to the task in some cases, but more often than not, you get what you pay for. I suggest you pay a small price for the erase and make sure you keep a copy of the installer on a cd so you can use it later (and have it make up it's costs when you help others with their problems). I recommend however, that you keep the drive stored in a safe place, and continue working on the image of the drive ( or have an expert take a look at the image and tell you what's what). It may be that your computer has deeper issues that you cannot fix outright, and the problems will recur again and again. If you find this to be the case, check out my "Moving your Windows install" postings. This will also go into OEM implications.

This is a basic method. It is in no way intended to be a cookie cutter solution. Check the upcoming 1.1 of this post for the variations and problems I ran into when attempting this method.

PS
If working from virtual machines, remember that they will often defer to your own OS when writing data to drives; make sure that you're using the latest version of your OS, the Virtual Machine program and the OS inside the virtual machine. Also, make sure that the virtual machine has sole access and control of the hard-disks you're using. If you set up the VM to share the drives with your OS, you may run into read\write errors when partitioning, imaging or cloning.

Hard Drive Problems BETA Discussion

Welcome to the land of expectations. Now get the hell out.

This post brobably will NOT solve your problems completely. Use it as a jumping off point.

that said....

Lately I've seen all kinds of problems with hard drives (hard disks-same thing); especially PATA\IDE\EIDE drives. Where's the problem? Depends on the behavior. I have some terms for you to use:

Mount- this means that the drive is not only visible to your system, but it shows up with a formatted volume

format- denotes the filesystem used and how data is written to or read from the drive, also how the drive is mounted or booted

Bootable- this format feature is the sole feature responsible for determining whether or not a drive can start up a computer or system. If this isn't enabled, the hard drive cannot be used to start an operating system (OS), even if that OS has been installed on it.

unformatted- a drive that shows up on the system, but has no formatting or operating system info; brand new drives usually are formatted, and erased drives are unformatted; damaged format info can also show a drive as unformatted

readable- this means that the drive is formatted, and that you have access to any data on it, and for some security styles, that you have permission to read the data

writeable- this means a drive can be written to (any drive can be written to if undamaged)

Cylinder- a physical space on a cylindrical plate in a hard drive that stores information magnetically; see wikipedia.com for details (use hard disk cylinders as the search term)

block- can be a physical or logical chunk of space on a hard disk. see wikipedia for more info

Head- a physical arm that reads or writes data to a drive magnetically

Partition- a logical or software divided storage space; once formatted, a hard drive has a formatted, logical storage space called a partition, and a physical drive can hold more than one partition, but cannot have partitions that take up (collectively or singularly) more space than the drive can hold. Many systems have one physical drive that is split into several partitions, one possibly being invisible to all but the BIOS, in case there is any failure of the main partition (factory default setup). See the documentation on your system to find out how to access this, and for more info, go to wikipedia.com and look up factory default partition, or hidden partition followed by your OS.

I'm a mac user, so permissions are important (also to unix). Windows only needs to be logged in as the owner or administrator of the machine. Unix needs a password when performing any action that requires this type of access unless this eventuality is properly handled by a programmer.

I also dabble in XP and lower versions of Windows. Many utilities exist for these OS'es.

One utility that will enable you to solve a few data loss problems is called Testdisk (search in wikipedia). It will work across platforms, and will at least see most partition types. If you lose data or accidentally reformat or delete a file, this program is quite adept at helping you recover it. However, it is not a catch all. I recommend you use a third party service for sensitive data recovery, so you don't damage the drive or data any further. This is expensive, but can be more effective when physical wear and tear leaves a drive lacking in function. Buying utilities that track deletion and changes in files is also a great way to protect yourself.

If you have an older PATA\IDE\EIDE (PIE) drive, you are probably not taking advantage of SMART programming. SMART is:

Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology, and is built into most ATA or SATA, or eSATA hard disks, and has been included in BIOS chips for a long time. PIE drives, while widely available, cheap, and very compatible, are of an older access design. Newer PIE drives don't often fail, but when they do, the fix can be costly. If more of them came with SMART built into them, that would be an offset cost. Alas, those of us on a budget at the front end sometimes have to bend over and take it in the rear end when it comes to our computers and data.

While there are a multitude of devices for purchase that allow you to forego such extraneous costs, the devices are so expensive that they are only a good buy if you have a lot of drives to worry about. Most people have only one or two.

In the 1.0 I will make note of a device or two, and possibly some software that will allow you to be the hero once in a while. For now, I suggest you start by checking some of the above information.

Typical problems:

Hard drive clicking sound -- possible mechanical wear, backup data and replace drive is recommended

Wont mount, show as available, or boot -- the main file table or record may be damaged or the partition data may be damaged. You will need a utility to recover data and a drive with at least the same amount of space as the damaged drive (1.5x the space is usually the minimum for some utilities that also dredge up deleted files; 2x is recommended, and your OS needs to be able to handle it properly)

Won't whir, show, spin, or mount at all -- the mechanical parts of the drive have failed, use a data recovery lab to get your files, bend over and take it like a real hero. Of course you could have dust in between plates, or even in the motor, but you're better off assuming them dead unless you open the drive to find out (like the vietnam war vet says: "I've seen some things, man, and some stuff!... ...I wouldn't recommend it!" I don't recommend opening the drive).

More later.