HD fail suggestions

[G.]

(Or, back up your data more often!)

I have a Win XP HD with a PBR 2 failure. It's from a Dell, which does some weird boot record stuff.

There is some data on there that is worth grabbing. My last backup was too long ago.

Anyone have a recommendation for a simple freeware app to pull the info off of it?

I tried Hiren's bootable disc, but I really have no idea how to use this crap. It gives me a way to boot the computer, then I'm lost.

Anybody have success with this? I just need a few fresh docs off the drive. All I can get through the explorer is a popup asking to re-format C:

Should I delete C:\Windows\System32? ;)

[Insomniac]

You can try https://www.system-rescue-cd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage, but it's also a lot of command line stuff. It's hard to know what to do until you know what the problem with the HDD is.

[WickerBill]

If you're willing to extract the hard drive, and have another system to use, this is likely the simplest way to get data off:

https://www.amazon.com/iDsonix-U3102-Drive-Docking-Station/dp/B00FDLCTQO/


Plug and play, shows up as a new drive letter, drag and drop the files you want. But as Insomniac said, if the drive is truly crashed, even this won't work.

[rosawendel]

I just upgraded my internal RAID 1 assembly from 2tb to 4tb. I tried to swap them one drive at a time to save the data, but couldn't get the first drive to partition the whole 4tb using that method (something about NTFS to GUID /dynamic), so I scrapped that method and did both at once. Fortunately, I had a place to park the data (and the 18 hours to do the switch).

Funniest part to me was Dell. I didn't know the brand of HD before the swap (they were Seagate Barracudas), so I went to Dell for info. They wanted $325 per drive. I found them on Amazon for $125 per. Then I cracked the box open to see the same brand.

At this point I've upgraded everything in the box except the 500 GBT boot drive, which I'm thinking of swapping to a SSD at some point.

[Insomniac]

One more thought is it seemed like you were able to access the drive by Windows offering to format it. You can find hard drive diagnostic utilities from the drive manufacturer that you can run to assess the problem.

If the disk has a hardware failure, your only option is a data recovery service.

If the disk was corrupted in the GPT/MBR (drive fine, but just shows up like it needs to be initialized (possibly what that format prompt is)) there are utilities that could repair that corruption.

[Insomniac]

I just upgraded my internal RAID 1 assembly from 2tb to 4tb. I tried to swap them one drive at a time to save the data, but couldn't get the first drive to partition the whole 4tb using that method (something about NTFS to GUID /dynamic), so I scrapped that method and did both at once. Fortunately, I had a place to park the data (and the 18 hours to do the switch).

Funniest part to me was Dell. I didn't know the brand of HD before the swap (they were Seagate Barracudas), so I went to Dell for info. They wanted $325 per drive. I found them on Amazon for $125 per. Then I cracked the box open to see the same brand.

At this point I've upgraded everything in the box except the 500 GBT boot drive, which I'm thinking of swapping to a SSD at some point.

You usually have to consult the capabilities of the RAID h/w or s/w to see if you can expand the size. I've seen it done 2 ways before.

1. Remove 1 drive and replace it with the larger drive and rebuild your array
2. Remove the other drive and rebuild to the new larger drive
3. Expand the size of the array to the unallocated space available on both drives

OR

1. Remove 1 drive and replace it with the larger drive and rebuild your array
2. Remove the RAID 1 so the drives are now independent
3. Replace the other drive and setup a new RAID 1

[rosawendel]

Yeah, I tried option 2, but didn't know about the 2.2 GP partition limit for NTFS.
On the upside, I know how to do it now, so I'll be completely prepared when I have to do it again in 2 years ('cause I'm totally going to remember). :D