Data Recovery off a "Damaged?" HDD

[Nightmare999]

I should have known better, I should have backed up my HDD. But I've been building systems since 95 and I've never had a HDD failure. I've had viruses, corrupted MBRs, lost/missing files, etc.

Some quick background on the PC and then I'll ask my question:

I built this system about 3-4 years back. I played WOW on this machine every couple days for about 1.5 years. The last couple weeks I played the PC would shut down without warning or notice. I thought it might be a heat problem with the Video Card or possibly the Power Supply. I swapped out several components, but the problem was intermittent and I never came to a final answer. I quit WOW and the PC sat unused for about 6 months. The HDD is a 120 GB Western Digital IDE.

Last week I did some data recovery for my sister in law. The system would not boot (common problem after the above described shut down). I swap out the Power Supply for a brand new Ultra 500 Watt. The system boots and runs fine. I installed her “bad” HDD into my system and copied the data she wanted to a Jump Drive. I removed her HDD and on the very next boot I get BSOD. I shut down the PC and check all the connections. Then the PC would not even boot (no power, no post, just ½ second of spin on the Power Supply Fan). Ok now I assume it is a dead Mobo. I purchase a new Mobo and rebuild the system.

Because I have the new Mobo I need to reinstall windows. At this point I find out that the Power Supply (the brand new one) is toast. I have no clue how/why this thing died after about 2 hours of use. I pull an old Power Supply from the garage and I install XP on a 200 GB Drive that has never been used. I get XP installed and updated (SP2). I install Norton and run all the updates (I think there is a slight chance her HDD could have infected my HDD with a virus or worm). Everything is running fine. I even run a full system scan on Norton. I connect the Western Digital HDD and boot to Windows. As soon as start to scan the drive with Norton I get a BSOD.

I pull the WD drive and run Memtest for about 7 hours. Everything checks out. Because this is a new Mobo I have everything at “normal” clock speeds.

Now I assume that the HDD is damaged, or at least the data on the HDD. Here is where I stand:

Windows XP actually booted and recognized the HDD when I had it connected as a “Master” on IDE2. I actually copied 1 file from the old drive to the new drive. After that the system became unstable and could not read the drive.

Ultimate Boot CD loaded the WD dive utilities and I checked the drive. I don’t understand the result, but I took a photo of the screen. It looks like this:

1 Raw Read Error Rate - Value 1 - Thresh 51 - Worst 1 *

I started to run a Salvation HDD Scan and Repair on the HDD from UBCD, but it found 200 errors in the first 2% of the drive. The scan was going to take 8-10 hours to complete. I wasn’t sure if Salvation was going to destroy the data during the recovery, so I stopped the scan.

I downloaded a copy of HDD Regenerator. I have not used this CD yet.

I downloaded Knoppix and ran that from the CD drive. Knoppix can see and mount the Western Digital HDD. I can even access some of the folders. As soon as I get to my personal folder in “My Documents” the drive become locked up. I’ve tried to access the data like that several times.

I can feel the drive spinning and given the access in Knoppix I know that the drive operates.

I tried to follow the directions in another post, but I don’t know the Command Prompt to copy files or navigate the drives.

Link http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums...opic.php?p=753

“Make SURE you are booting
Knoppix with the following bootcodes (cheatcodes):
nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab

the last two are very important since otherwise, Knoppix may try
to mount and write to the drive; potentially catistrophic when
trying to recover data.

The Main HDD is called “HDA1”
The Damaged HDD is called “HDB1”

If I can copy all the files in My Documents then that should be everything I need. The windows path should be “c:\Documents and Settings\Night”

If I boot Knoppix like this:

Knoppix 2 nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab

What command do I use to copy the folder?

Is there something else I should try before the HDD Regenerator?

Based on the information I provided can anyone tell what is wrong with the drive? I don't think it is a virus or worm any more. Could the Power Supply failure damage the drive? I always thought that the drive would spin down and "park" under its own momentum.

I might try to Clone the HDD onto a 3rd 200 GB Seagate drive. I don’t think that will do any harm while I wait for a reply here.

Thanks
Nightmare

[Nightmare999]

Clone does not appear to work.

I setup the "Bad" drive as the Master and the "New" drive as the Slave.

# dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

The Error codes ran by as I started this post. It has lots of I/O Errors

I tried to run the command again and I get:

end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 0
printk: 2062 messages suppressed.
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 0
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 8
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 1
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 16
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 2
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 24
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 3
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 0
dd: reading '/dev/hda': Input/output error


It says it copied 28 MB the first time