[ale] Hard Drive data recovery services?

Thu May 23 23:30:37 EDT 2013

Hi all,

I agree with what Brian said, but wanted to add some explanatory notes.

Regarding damaging the drive further, if the drive has mechanical problems, or has had a head crash or hard error, any data recovery program could cause further damage.  This is particularly true if there is crash residue on the platter surface or if, horrors, the head remains in contact with the platter.  Spinrite uses  very aggressive head movement in data recovery mode, so it shouldn't be used if you think there is physical damage to the drive.  I would think that even using ddrescue could kill a drive in that case.

I personally own Spinrite and have had good results with it.  I also recommend it.  You can find out about it at

https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
https://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm

although some of the documentation there is a bit dated.  Steve Gibson, the inventor, also sometimes quotes user testimonials on his Security Now podcast.  Those are interesting and I believe they're totally authentic.  The podcast is availalble at

https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm - low bandwidth podcasts and transcripts
http://twit.tv/sn - higher bandwidth podcasts and videos

I've personally recovered data with this product.  He charges $ 89 for it.  There is no try before you buy, since some people would abuse that and use it without paying.  However, he has a total satisfaction guarantee.  So, if you buy it and don't like it, you can get your money back.

Based on an old ALE thread, I understand that there was an old less capable product called dd-rescue or possibly dd_rescue.  It has now been superceded by ddrescue, which is better, as I understand it.  In my prior research, I also came across GNU ddrescue - http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html which may be worth a look.

The ddrescue type products specialize in reading all nominally readable sectors and storing the data away.  That's a good first step, as Brian mentioned.

Spinrite specializes in reading nominally UNREADABLE sectors.  If a sector read request comes back as unreadable, Spinrite disables the drive's error correction and begins reading raw samples of the sector data.  It accumulates a statistical database of the sector data, and does this up to 2000 times.  It flys the heads in from many different locations, taking advantage of tiny variations in the magnetic fields and track alignment.  For a case with many particularly poor sectors, and on a large drive, this entire process can take days or weeks to try to recover the bad data.  Eventually, if Spinrite's algorithm believes it has sufficient data as to what the data in the sector actually was, it writes the correct data back to the sector.  Then it moves on to the next.

Spinrite is not guaranteed to recover all data.  But, in many cases, it will recover enough to allow the drive to be accessible again if it wasn't accessible.  In other cases, it will recover enough of unreadable files to make them readable

I recommend running Spinrite on level 2 mode for data recovery.

Spinrite also has merit as a preventative maintenance tool.  I run it on it's level 4 mode a couple of times per year on all my drives.  This is quite time consuming, and will take days on a 1 TB drive, but it helps prevent sector read errors.  Level 4 mode reads each sector, inverts it, rewrites it, and reads, inverts, and rewrites again.  This forces the controller to use its own algorithms to verify the health of each sector, triggering sector relocation if necessary.  It also refreshes all the magnetic fields.

Spinrite is run from a bootable disc using it's own freedos OS so it has exclusive control of the hdd.  It's better if the drive is directly attached to the motherboard.  Some USB drives can be scanned, if the bios provides proper usb support.  This is much slower and Spinrite cannot do as much to the drive.  I've heard that you can run Spinrite in a VM and scan an external drive while doing other things on your normal OS, but haven't every tried to figure it out.

If running Linux, you might want to run a long smart test with something like Disk Utility or Gsmartcontrol after running the Spinrite tests to see if there are any causes where the drive thinks it's about to fail.  Spinrite has a smart data analysis screen.  Take that with a grain of salt.  For, example, I've seen thousands of seek errors reported on Seagate drives.  I believe those reports to be erronious.

I can help anyone configure and run Spinrite if needed and will be glad to answer any questions that I can.

Sincerely,

Ron

Brian Mathis <brian.mathis+ale at betteradmin.com> wrote:

>If you wanted to try DIY, take a look at ddrescue.
>
>There's also Spinrite, which costs money but so far it has worked
>really
>well for me.  Some people don't like it because it writes back to the
>"bad"
>drive and could make things worse, but I think that will mainly be an
>issue
>if there is physical damage to the drive.
>
>I would try to make an image using ddrescue, then you could try
>spinrite
>and if it makes things worse, then you've already got the backup image.
>
>
>
>❧ Brian Mathis
>
>
>On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 9:56 AM, Pete Hardie <pete.hardie at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> ISTR that the topic of data recovery has come up before on the list. 
>Does
>> anyone have recommendations for good places to get data recovered off
>a
>> laptop drive?  The wife's laptop appears to have crapped out and she
>did
>> not have the latest set of photos backed up
>>
>> TIA,
>>
>> Pete Hardie
>> --------
>> Better Living Through Bitmaps
>>
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