Crashed HDD- Complicated

Hello everybody, first post here
So here's what's happened-
1> PATA 80Gb Seagate Baracuda HDD powered up wrongly. KABOOM.
2> Personally fixed the fried PCB
3> Recognised in BIOS> but not in WinXP SP2
4> Recovery Console recognises the drive...takes 15 mins to load though
5> Drive had 4 partitions, 3 are accessible through the console
6> ChkDsk, FixBoot, and FixMBR doesn't help
7> Partitons refuse to be formatted, deleted, etc.
8> BartPE loads(relatively) but doesn't copy- gives errors, and becomes non-responsive.
So here's the problem- I can't copy the roughly 50,000 files on the disk manually in the console- the copy command doesn't do directories. And BartPE hangs on the partitions, and even the ones that it copies are corrupt. However, the copies through console are working fine.
I can't run ANY recovery software on it 'cause it's not showing up in Windows (on a different disk of course)
Please, anybody, any ideas?

 

Have you tried booting a live linux distro to see if the drive is recognised with that?

 

Not yet, I'll have to download the image first. I'm thinking of Knoppix. THis seems like a bad time to get introduced to Linux though . Never used it before, though I'm good with command-line. That's my fall back option...I forgot to mention that the partitions are all NTFS, that means DOS utilities are out- the destination drive is NTFS too
The thing that mystifies me is that if Recovery COnsole can see it, if BartPE can see it, why not XP regular gui?

 

Check in disk managment to see if drive is recognised there and drive letters are assigned.

I'd still go the linux route though (knoppix can read/write NTFS volumes) but you may have to change to properties of the destination volume to read/write rather than read only on startup.

 

Nope, forgot to mention that one. Doesn't show up in Disk Management. Downloading Knoppix now, but the 'net here's too slow, it'll take a few hours..anything I can do till then?

 

I'd leave it for the time being and wait for knoppix.

 

Okay, I'll do that I'll post an update here after a try with Knoppix. In the meantime, if anyone figures out a way to copy directories in Recovery Console (after the set command to allow access to directories other than system), let me know...

 

If you are happy to delete them, get the Seagate utilities SeaTools and DiscWizard. Do a zero format on it and use Discwizard to repartition and format it.

Matt

 

Obvious question (I should have asked before). When you replaced the PCB did you use one from the exact same model drive and firmware?

Matt's advice is strongly recommended, if we ever retrieve the data from the drive then a zero format is the first thing I would do afterwards, even then I wouldn't put any required data on the drive, to be honest about all I'd use it for is transferring data from one place to another. Even using the drive for backups would worry me.

 

Finally! Knoppix worked nicely. The PCB was from the same drive, I couldn't find a matching one. I simply swapped the burnt components.
I also had to use some no{agp} command to make Knoppix boot to the desktop- apparently it's an issue with the 945 board. ALL the partitions were recovered, with only ONE file corrupt. It did freeze on the system partition, but that was useless anyway- I just needed the My Documents folder. The drive is now headed to the graveyard.
What surprises me most is that Windows refuses to recognise a drive that's recognised by the Recovery Console. Knoppix has impressed me so much that I'm gonna make the new drive dual-boot---wouldn't hurt to learn this OS as well, it's excellent. Nice encounter with Linux I must say.
Thanks for all the help guys- I would've messed with the disk a lot longer before turning to Linux if it weren't for you guys. I owe you.

 

Thanks for the feedback rm1988, glad you got your data back. Perhaps still worth a zero format and testing before sending to silicon heaven but as I said I wouldn't trust the drive too much.

You can find diagnostic tools here for that drive.