Phatmass Studio Pc Crashed... All Data Likely Lost...

[ironmonk]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' post='1883863' date='Jun 5 2009, 02:34 AM']Ha! All Hard Drives will fail, spinning HD's are in fact obsolete, solid state is superior but mad expensive. Many of the failures of spinning HD's is that they no longer spin.

Which maybe the problem here, the mechanics of the HD are shot, or the logic board on the HD is burnt out. If that is the case (and sorry to say sounds like it) no amount of software will fix it.

You can have the data rescued by taking it to a professional who will from what I understand take out the disk in the HD and put them in another. But that is very difficult so it will be a professional price.[/quote]

Solid state has a limited life. The way solid state works is at the electron level, and each sector can only be written to a set number of times before that sector dies. All HD's do fail, but that's what backup is for

SSHD's have come a long way in the last few years, but for a workstation, the cost isn't worth it.
SSHD's have a place in a laptop where batter life is of greater need than cost.

In the business world, SSHD's are best used by the example that Sun has with the S7000 series SAN's... EMC has all SSHD SAN's and they now have customers that are having to replace their entire data array HD's at the same time, defeats the whole raid 5 setup lol.

Also, when a SSHD dies, no data is recoverable. Hak5 has a good podcast on them, check it out.

God Bless,
ironmonk

[philothea]

[quote name='dUSt' post='1883831' date='Jun 5 2009, 12:44 AM']I've been trying to fix it for the last few hours. It seems like it's a corrupt partition or something. Safe mode, Recovery Console, WIn XP boot CD... all failed. I'm actually on the computer right now from a bootable Linux CD--just to try and recover some data before doing a complete reformat--but when I try to browse the hard drive, Linux gives a "unable to mount device" error.

I'm freaking out.[/quote]

Don't freak out too much, yet. Linux gives "unable to mount device" errors ALL THE TIME FOR NO GOOD REASON. (I love Linux, but mounting things is not a strong point.)

[quote name='ironmonk' post='1883989' date='Jun 5 2009, 08:45 AM']Also, when a SSHD dies, no data is recoverable.[/quote]

Huh! That's a good point. Might eventually be recoverable once they're common enough for someone to make a tool to do it...

[Nihil Obstat]

Staples has good tech support. They've recovered data from my crashed computer before.
Mind you, it was still technically running. Just impossible to boot up. Still, well more than I could have done with it.

[BG45]

I would never go to Best Buy. A friend works on Geek Squad in Chicago and does nothing but whine about the laziness. Another friend has had her comp repaired in Boston by Geek Squad seven times and it keeps breaking from the same problem.

[url="http://www.kptv.com/video/19513766/index.html"]Then there's this video where a news station unplugged their HD to test repair services and see how they reacted. Best Buy told them that they had a virus, that their mobo was fried, and that they had no hope of recovery and needed a new computer; in that order.[/url]

Prayers though...if tools like bootable Linux OS's aren't helping, it's bad.

[scardella]

I saw a video of a talk from a professional data recovery guy

Hardware failures:
If the platters or motor is damaged, you're pretty screwed even if you send it to a professional recovery company (the kind that charges hundreds/thousands of dollars). If the circuit board on it is fried, they can usually replace the circuitboard on the hd and get the info off.

Software failures:
This is usually stuff an experienced tech person can handle with the right hardware and software tools. I've had limited success at my last job with it. Sometimes the for-pay stuff is quite worth it... I've still got the necessary hardware parts (unless your drive is more than 500GB), and I could try what I could find if you want. PM me if you're interested. You'd have to ship the hard drive to Michigan though.

[IcePrincessKRS]

That smells of elderberries. I'll say some prayers that you can get it fixed.

[Ash Wednesday]

My heart aches for your scenario. Not too long ago I had a laptop stolen and then a hard drive crash in one year alone. That was a bad year.

[dUSt]

[quote name='johnnydigit' post='1883941' date='Jun 5 2009, 04:32 AM']finally i booted to recovery console and fixmbr did it. entire drive and winxp restored. go figure.[/quote]
Yep, my problem is that the installed Windows Recovery Console crashes with a blue screen of death.

When I run recovery console from the XP boot CD, it only recognizes the "H:\" drive, and not the "C:\" drive.

Thanks for the links, I'll read through them.

[dUSt]

[quote name='ironmonk' post='1883984' date='Jun 5 2009, 08:37 AM']You could get USB Hard drive Enclosure for around $15 at a CompUSA, take the hard drive out of the crashed system, put it into the enclosure then recover the data.

As long as it's spins, you're good.[/quote]
Yeah, I think this is what I'm going to try today.

[RemnantRules]

man! My heart sank when I read this! I'll be praying for you and your computer.

[johnnydigit]

[quote name='dUSt' post='1884072' date='Jun 5 2009, 09:08 AM']Yep, my problem is that the installed Windows Recovery Console crashes with a blue screen of death.

When I run recovery console from the XP boot CD, it only recognizes the "H:\" drive, and not the "C:\" drive.

Thanks for the links, I'll read through them.[/quote]

oh ya i had to run the console from the cd too. i think fixmbr still works if c isn't being recognized..

[LouisvilleFan]

I've had luck using a USB enclosure and connecting the hard drive to another computer to copy the data off. If it's a mechanical problem, you can also try double-wrapping it in ziploc and freezing it for several hours. Sometimes the metal will shrink just enough to get it working again. Learned about that trick from Fr. Roderick... worked for him.

But seriously... all that important stuff wasn't backed up? Hard drives aren't exactly known for their reliability.

[dUSt]

Thank you for the prayers.

I went out and bought an external hard drive enclosure and hooked up the crashed studio hd to a working computer. No luck. I got "drive is corrupted" errors.

So, in a last ditch effort, I created a boot CD with some DOS based recovery software on it. Tried a few things, and was finally able to find something that would actually recognize the corrupted drive and run a checkdisk on it, in DOS.

Upon reboot, to my suprise, Windows XP went into it's "checking disc for errors" process, and after about an hour, Windows booted up. All data is intact.

THE COMPUTER IS SAVED!

Now, I'll be spending tomorrow backing up the 80 gigs of phatmass studio recording sessions onto a backup HD.

I love you all.




For you geeks, here's the software that saved the day: [url="http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/11/avira_ntfs4dos_personal.html"]http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/11/avira_n...s_personal.html[/url]

[Donna]

Thank God - dUSt what a nightmare!

I'm really glad you recovered the music.

[the lords sheep]

Yea!!!! Praise God that it all worked out!