external HDD error?

[Thanas]

Hi guys.

I was transferring data (about 5 GB) to my external HDD and during the transfer it fell about half a meter. Now when I reconnect it to the PC it is extremely slow to be identified and when it is identified it also is extremely slow. I can see the folders (after a wait period) but when I click on them the windows 7 explorer crashes.

Is the HDD lost or is there a way to fix this problem?

[Serafina]

Make copies of all important data ASAP.
I had pretty much the same problem, with extremely slow access and random crashes. It worked fine occasionally, but eventually the data on it got corrupted very fast and shortly thereafter it was completely inaccessible.
Since it seems to be exactly the same for you, making backups should really be your first step.

Now from what i was told back then it might just be the casing instead of the actual drive. Sadly i forgot how to check, but i couldn't explain it properly anyway i suppose.
Good luck.

[Vyraeth]

Did you test with a different USB cable?

And yes, until you finish testing it - back up data from the drive immediately if you don't have it backed up already.

[Purple]

Like Serafina I had the exact same thing happen to me a while back and I can confirm her advice. Back up the data as soon as you can and forget about the HDD. If you are lucky you might get a hour or two of work done with it at most before it dies.

[Edi]

Wouldn't necessarily be amiss to put the thing in a sealed bag and in the freezer for an hour or two before backing your stuff up, because that can help. But no matter what you do, just get the data off the drive. Those things don't like impacts at all.

[Alferd Packer]

Wouldn't necessarily be amiss to put the thing in a sealed bag and in the freezer for an hour or two before backing your stuff up, because that can help. But no matter what you do, just get the data off the drive. Those things don't like impacts at all.

I second this. It doesn't always work, but I have saved data off of failing hard drives before doing this trick.

[Sea Skimmer]

Where ever the heads were touching would have been ruined, at the least, drive is dead. The freezer trick might work, it might also finish off the drive if any moisture has leaked inside the casing, as it will condense to liquid and short it out.

[Torben]

The freezer trick is a bad idea all around - it might maybe possibly help a little bit in some instances maybe. If... but as has been pointed out, as the drive warms condensation will build and that will ruin it totally. While it is possible the drive has suffered actual surface platen damage, this is actually harder to do than I once thought (at least with modern drives). I do second the issue that you need to backup the data. If the drive is working properly, then simply copy everything off of it. Based on your description of the problem, I'd guess that the heads are now out of alignment with the platens and the latency you are experiencing is the heads trying to seek the actual tracks on the discs, and failing - hence the crash. I'd recommend SpinRite. It is quite simply the single best software for recovering data from defective drives, realigning drive heads, etc. Available from GRC.com, cost around $80 USD. Developed by Steve Gibson, who has been working with hard drives and their associated components since the late 80's. Check it out, if you want, I can loan you my copy to try. I've used it to recover data and restore hard drives that I thought would never work again - granted, it can take a while as it examines each sector and continually attempts to recover data from it - but it works wonders.

[atg]

SpinRite oh my.

Look up 'Steve Gibson Fraud' and you'll see why spinrite is a piece of crap.

A couple of quick examples from here:

Furthermore, the embedded magnetic servo (used in virtually all reasonably current disk
drives) can only be written at the factory. If it "weakened" then the
drive would fail permanently -- SpinRite could not possibly help.

Worse, Steve encouraged people to use SpinRite to "recover" areas that had
been detected and marked as defective at the factory, a bad idea that
leads to more failures in the long run, since end user controllers are not
as sensitive as factory test equipment -- they are simply incapable of the
kind of thorough testing done at the factory. Then of course SpinRite
would be "needed" again to "fix" those failures, a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

* "prevents mass storage systems from crashing" (nothing can do that)

* "sophisticated magnetodynamic physics models" (pseudo science)

* "weakest possible magnetic signals" (not real)

* "we doubt whether anyone but Steve and a handful of aliens would even
know what all this is" (no argument there)

* "Weak Bits" (no such thing)

* "gradual evolution of the drive's storage surfaces through physical and
magnetic stresses" (mumbo jumbo)

* "SpinRite is actually able to lower the amplification of the drive's
internal read-amplifier" (impossible, and after all this time Steve
apparently still does not know that data is recorded on magnetic disks
with flux reversals, not "amplitude")

* "mass storage systems need periodic preventive maintenance" (nonsense)

* "yeah, we know, Steve's a magician with his code" (how modest)

I can safely say in my 10 years in the IT industry the amount of times I've seen/heard/read-thoughts-of people using or considering using SpinRite is 0.

realigning drive heads

Yeah see something like this can only be done in the factory.

[Torben]

I suppose I misspoke - it does not realign the drive heads, but rather the data associated with the heads, and modifies the pointers in the tracks to tell the drive where the data is actually located.

Just one question - have you actually used the software and proven that it does not work as advertised?

I can say that I have used it successfully many times, personally and professionally. I have 6 customer drives on my bench at the moment that no other software could even begin to read, however, SpinRite was able to recover the data from the damaged sectors, move it to undamaged sectors, allow the drives to boot, and the data to be recovered. I'd like to say that I've never had a recurring issue with a drive that was recovered by SpinRite, but as soon as I pull the data, I decommission the drive. I will say that I run it as routine maintenance on all of my production drives yearly and have never experienced an issue - but then I would expect not to in any event, it is more of an insurance than anything else.

In short, I will take my personal experience with the product and my not inconsiderable time in the IT field (10 years myself, from help desk support to contract services to enterprise-grade) over the letter to which you linked. That said, I do not expect my experiences to sway your opinion, nor am I trying to do so - simply explaining my position.

[atg]

No I've not used it personally for data recovery - but, to be frank, when others, more knowledgeable than I in regards to the mechanics of HDD operation, have proven the very fundamentals of it to be rubbish then I don't need to try it myself. Much the same that I don't need to try something like Astrology or Homeopathy to know they're false. I mean seriously look at the 'first thing' SpinRite does according to his page is: "The FIRST THING SpinRite does when it starts examining and working with a drive is to completely disable the drive's built-in automatic sector relocation." Yep the software disables the drive correction ability to account for error'd sectors. Its a great idea to leave failing sectors of a drive useable, nothing could go wrong there... Guess all the hard drive manufacturers in the world are mistaken. What justification does he give for this? "Oh noes the drive is trying to hide that it is failing".

Gibson works on FUD and FUD alone. RAW sockets in WindowsXP going to destroy the internet and bring about 'massive internet terrorism'? His 'perfect' SYNCookies clone? Microsoft making backdoors into their systems via a print spool bug? "NanoProbes"? All proven either false (by people such as the SysInternals guys), or in the case of his GENESIS syncookies clone he conveniently 'didn't know syncookies existed' and his implementation was broken. His website is full of pseudo-science, FUD, and self promotion.

I have personally tested his ShieldsUp product and proven that one to be bunk (I'm currently connected to a sever via SSH port 22 but your product says the port is not open? Riiiiiggghttt. Port 80 not responding on a webserver? Sure why not. SMTP blocked on a mailserver? Yeah I believe that ).

I'll grant that maybe some of its recover tools may work, but then its hardly the only tool out there that can do it (any many are free). But the rest like 'refreshing' the drive magnetism and recovering dead sectors? Either dangerous or pure crap.

[Torben]

I mean seriously look at the 'first thing' SpinRite does according to his page is: "The FIRST THING SpinRite does when it starts examining and working with a drive is to completely disable the drive's built-in automatic sector relocation." Yep the software disables the drive correction ability to account for error'd sectors. Its a great idea to leave failing sectors of a drive useable, nothing could go wrong there... Guess all the hard drive manufacturers in the world are mistaken. What justification does he give for this? "Oh noes the drive is trying to hide that it is failing".

If you had bothered to read the very next section, this is explained so that SpinRite can continue reading from the damaged sector to recover the data not to reuse the sector. The auto-sector relocation causes the drive to not even attempt to access a bad sector, hence drive errors and failures. SpinRite continually attempts to read the data from the sector until it recovers the data. This is something I have not seen or heard of any other tool even attempting - and most likely the reason that SpinRite works where other drive recovery utilities fail. The hard drive manufacturers enable this so that in normal operation a bad sector is automatically excluded - this is a good thing. But during data recovery it prevents software from accessing those very same bad sectors where data is located. So, it would need to be disabled to allow recovery.

As for ShieldsUp not returning port 22 open when you are currently connected via SSH...you do realize that it is simply querying the ports to determine which ones respond and which ones do not? It is not designed to show which ports might currently be in use, but to determine which ports might be a security risk. So, if port 22 is set to not respond to outside queries (I believe he uses ICMP packets, but might be mistaken) then even if you were using the port, it would not respond to an outside query. Port 80 might very well be blocked on a web server, if it is running on a home internet connection - most ISPs block 80 and other standard server ports like SMTP to prevent home users from running servers without paying for a commercial level connection. Now, if the web server is running on a commercial connection, I could still envision either the port being configured to not reply to pings (www.cnn.com will not respond to a ping, but if I navigate to that site, it still works) or possibly having a different port configured for web serving, or maybe some other routing/firewall configuration is set up to block anything other than an actual page serve request.

Bottom line - I've personally used it for over 4 years to recover data on countless drives, and it performed where other applications failed. But, then, I'm just some guy posting on a forum.

[Torben]

In addition, if you were originating the connection to another server using SSH, that server would need to have port 22 open, but your firewall would NOT open 22 externally - it would dynamically assign a port number above the service range (above 1024 as I recall) that would be used for that session, so that 22 would not be open externally for you, and wouldn't show even under a full port scan - the dynamically assigned port would be open. That is a security measure that has been in implementation for years.

Now, if you were having users connect to you via SSH, that is another ball of wax, but still explainable depending on your firewall/router configuration.

[Torben]

Thanas,

Any word on the HDD?

[Starglider]

Gibson works on FUD and FUD alone.

I disagree with that in that SpinRite does do a raw block scan and will recover files when the filesystem is trashed. So it does at least do something useful but I agree that all of Gibson's marketing is technobabble targetted at idiots. Personally I like Active File Recovery for unbreaking Windows drives, because it provides plenty of low-level info and control, and prioritises real features over wizards and nonsense.

But the rest like 'refreshing' the drive magnetism and recovering dead sectors? Either dangerous or pure crap.

Agree. Magnetic data does eventually degrade if not written, but a consumer HDD will suffer mechanical failure decades before that is relevant.