PC geek question...Bricked hard drive problem
 

My Dell XPS 700 just bricked one of the hard drives on me and I'm wondering if any of you super geniuses knows of a way that I can save the data.

What about a backup, you say? 2 weeks ago, my house flooded when a toilet water supply line broke and the power supply for my external hard drive fried, thus my last backup is 2 weeks old. Not the end of the world, but annoying enough that I'm sitting here on my 3rd beer on the way to finishing the 6 pack and entertaining putting a dent in my liquor cabinet.

I have 2 500GB hard drives in Raid 0. That means that they're striping one another. Apparently Drive 0 is fine, but Drive 1 is toast. I don't know to what degree, all I know is that when I left, it was fine. The power went out and despite a surge protector and a UPS, the computer shut off. When I turned it back on, the drive was dead. Windows loads, but just sticks at the Windows XP loading screen and no mode or option gets it past loading.

I called Dell and they're using my warranty to send me a repair monkey out on Monday or Tuesday...buuuut they're telling me that they have to format and reinstall Windows on a newly installed drive. I'm thinking that there's GOT to be a way to get my info off of the drives.

Any ideas???

So the fucked up drive will start to load windows? If so it's not "bricked", sounds like it might be corrupt or going bad. Just put it in the PC as a secondary drive, install windows on another drive. Then you'll have a good chance of pulling the files you need off the bad drive. After you do that... If the drive itself really is going bad this should tell ya http://www.hdtune.com/ . Then you'll know if it's garbage or if it's a just corrupt file system etc.

Also check the cables, I've had tons of different ide and sata hard drive cables go bad over the years.

The Dell diagnostics test verified that the 2nd drive is bad. The RAID 0 set up (striping) is what's got me concerned as the Dell girl told me that in a striping configuration, it's hard to get the data off of the good or the bad drive.

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Really depends on how toast that drive is. Ultimately you want to get it block-level duplicated to another drive using something like Norton Ghost. Do you hear the drive spin up? Make any strange noise? Detect in the bios?

Hmm I believe raid 0 is for speeding up performance. I thought you were using it as a backup option which is actually raid 1. Which means the data is split between drives on yours.

Well you could still install windows on another drive and leave those two as is. Windows should be able to see those drives as a secondary drive after you install another drive and set it as primary boot drive.

Raid 0 is striping which does improve performance, but you're stuck with the 2 week old backup unless you get both of those drives over to a data recovery center. Both drives need to be accessible in a striped array to get your data back.

The best scenarios when you want speed are Raid 3 or 5 configs, but both of those involve at least three drives.

If the windows boot screen appears then it's not totally fucked yet. It could just be some bad sectors or something else not dire. Sending it to a data recovery center will cost thousands. If the data is worth thousands then by all means, unplug the damn thing and don't use it anymore, send it to them! Otherwise try to install windows on a new drive and keep those two drives in raid, windows should be able to access them even if one is going bad. Obviously windows can still access it because it's trying to boot windows.

Toilet water always kills them

Not exactly...

All that the windows boot screen really means in Z's case is that the boot sector and the initial boot files are on the working drive.

The structure of a typical striped array involves data being stretched across both drives. Trying to pull files from a broken striped array is like trying to piece together a document that someone tore up and then burnt half of the torn pieces. Yes indeed, some of the words and sentences may be "readable" (and you may be lucky to even get a paragraph or two), but for the most part everything will be irrecoverable.

Thanks for the info guys...I'm knee deep trying to get this to work again.

Any other ideas...keep 'em coming.

If youre using RAID 0, youre going to need a data recovery house. I have a really good one I use with my clients. Its pricey though. Hit me up if you want the info

Other than that, I cant really think of any other options other than alcohol.

i hate to hear shit like this,wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

btw, i work on a 2tb raid1 external setup plus i back it up occasionally so if something were to happen TO BOTH DRIVES AT ONCE i wouldnt be totally fucked

I don't know how RAID works. I know what can be done with it.
But I've never used it.

There is a "101 ways to revive a dead hard drive" guide out there some where..


PS: If you try freezing the drive, it may work for awhile immediately afterwards, but it will never work again..

Not sure how willing you are to do this but if you can get another drive of the exact same make/model you might be able to swap the circuitry/guts out of the new and into the old. I've heard of someone doing this before and it worked but I don't think I'd ever try it myself.. good luck!

"and" accessible which is my point, he "may" be able to get what he wants back. And if the other drive isn't totally fucked it "might" read off it too. There's no telling until you try.

Ummmm ya i know how raid works. But you pretty much just agreed with what I said, some of it might be readable. What he needs may be recoverable by simply doing what I said instead of spending thousands like you said to do. Everyone is not willing to spend thousands of dollars to get their data back. There's no telling how bad the situation is without looking at the system.

This is how data recovery joints do it, but unless youve got experience doing it, i wouldnt recommend it.