Failed HDD - Whats the best method

Published on August 23, 2023 By Anthony R In Personal Computing

Had a HDD go down a couple days ago and its been a pain. At first my windows installation went corrupt after it couldn't boot with that drive, but that was easily fixed with system restore. So I've been trying to fish the unbacked data off the failed drive and I'm still at it. The closest I came to mounting it in Linux was with Linux Puppy, but the files were read only and I couldn't copy them. Basically I don't care much about the drive, just the data on it. I was hoping I could fish the files out of there without attempting repair. Does anyone have a suggestion how to best do that? I know I may have one shot at this, so I've been careful.

Comments (Page 3)

Anthony R

on Aug 30, 2023

It seems like quite a bit of data recovery at 90% from a drive that was totally trashed, so its pretty good. thanks again Jafo.

Anthony R

on Aug 31, 2023

A bit of a mixed result for me as the data recovery keeps freezing up. I've been just going after the most vital stuff.

Jafo

on Aug 31, 2023

It's the 'vital stuff' that makes the time, effort and expense worth it.

Anything you get that you otherwise would not have....that's when you know you're winning...

Anthony R

on Aug 31, 2023

Working it folder by folder I've been finding lots of stuff to restore... its pretty good to find at least some vital files on a totally trashed drive. Its unlikely I would find more files with any other method.

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