There are many ways to recover data from dying harddrives. As we try some and are successful in recovering at least some data we’ll document them here.
But firstly, what is a dying harddrive?
A typical experience of an end user of a dying harddrive is when accessing certain files takes a very long time and then the file is actually not able to be opened. This is because the part of the harddrive where the file is written is no longer accessible. Often this is caused by a harddrive (or more accurately the computer containing the harddrive) being bumped or moved while it is turned on. This causes the spinning discs inside the harddrive to come in contact with the part of the harddrive that reads the data from them and damages the surface of the harddrive. Once a harddrive starts to die it is generally only a matter of time before the harddrive completely fails. So in that circumstance it is best to get as much data off it as quickly as you can and then either give up or try more intense methods of recovery to get the things you couldn’t get at first.
Note: if your harddrive is making clicking sounds that is bad. You should probably get professional help rather than doing anything else. This will cost a lot of money as they will need to disassemble your harddrive in a clean room and order a replacement harddrive identical to yours to swap parts from. This is time consuming and might also fail to recover any files.
The following instructions assume that you are using a Windows computer.
METHOD 1
If some files are still accessible this method should work to recover all the files that are not yet damaged. We’re assuming that the damaged harddrive is the only harddrive in your computer, and therefore it is the one you are running Windows from as well as storing your data on.
What you will need:
– a Windows PE boot disk. You can make one of these using another working computer, a blank CD, and a free application called AOMEI backupper. Once you install AOMEI backupper, run it, and go to the Utilities menu and select “Create Bootable Media”. Then on the next screen choose to create Windows PE boot media.
– an external USB harddrive
How:
1. connect the external USB harddrive to the damaged computer
2. insert the Windows PE boot disk into the CD drive of the damaged computer
3. boot from CD (often you will have to press F12 as the computer starts in order to boot off CD)
4. it will start loading windows files but it won’t look like normal windows. Then it will have a graphical environment that looks a bit like Windows (it is just part of windows, hence the similarity) and it will start the AOMEI backupper software. On the menu, choose Utilities and then choose Windows Shell Command Line.
5. This will bring you to what is known as a command prompt. Now you need to locate your harddrive. The drive letters will be different to normal because you booted your computer off the CDROM. C: drive will contain two files: bootmgr and bootsqm.dat. This is from the CDROM. Another drive will contain 3 folders called boot, EFI, and sources. This is also from the CD ROM.
To access different drive letters type the drive letter followed by a colon. Then type dir to see the contents of the drive. eg.
C:
DIR
then it will show you what the drive contains. Start with C: and then move on throughout the alphabet. You may need to go through all the drive letters in order to find your external harddrive if it is setup for a specific letter normally (the computer will try to use that same drive letter if it is available).
If you find a drive that contains a “Users” folder then type “dir users” and it will list the users on that computer. If one of the users is you then you know you’ve found your drive!
You need to know where all your files are stored. If you do not, then you should backup all of \users\ and that will get most places that people store things.
Once you have found your external drive and your dying harddrive continue to the next step.
6. Windows 7 and later and Windows PE is equipped with a command called robocopy. In the following examples E: is the drive letter of the external drive (substitute the letter yours is using) and D: is the drive letter of the damaged drive (again, substitute the letter yours is using). eg.
robocopy “d:\users\george” “e:\recovered\george\” /e /r:0
Some explanation:
d:\users\george in the example is where we think all the files belonging to george are kept
e:\recovered is a directory we created on the external harddrive to contain the files we recover. We’re going to put them into a george directory inside that.
/e means copy everything including empty directories
/r:0 means (noting that is a ZERO at the end not the letter O) if you get an error when you access the file give up on that file and continue to the next file. r=retry. We could specify multiple retries if we wanted, but remember that every time you access the disk you might damage more of the disk, so initially just get as much as you can off the disk as quickly as possible.
Other commands you might want to know so you can move around:
cd = change directory eg. “cd users” would move you inside the users directory so you can look around. “cd \” would move you back to the top directory on the harddrive. “cd ..” would move you up one directory in the harddrive. “cd a*” would move you inside a the first directory that starts with the letter a in the current directory – this can be useful if you don’t want to type long directory names – you can type the unique part of it and then it will work out the rest.
md = make directory. eg. “md george” would create a directory called george in the current directory
Things to note:
At the end of each robocopy it will tell you the number of failed directories and failed folders. Write these down along with the full directory name as you will need this in step 7. In fact, if you write down the exact robocopy command you use that will make it much easier in step 7.
7. once you have copied as much as you can get off the harddrive you can try to recopy any directory where there were failed directories or folders. Just use the same robocopy command as you originally used and it will skip any files that have already been copied and will just retry copying the failed ones. At the end, see if the failed directories and files was less than it was the first time – update your notes with the new numbers. Retry all the directories that you copied where there were failures the first time around.
8. Now if you really don’t want to give up you can try using /r:5 and re-attempting what you did in step 7. This will retry every failed file 5 times before moving on to the next one. NOTE: If you do this step, be aware that this may prevent other recovery attempts from working if you are planning to try anything else afterward. This is because you might just damage the harddrive further in the process of trying to access the bad parts multiple times. Also note that it is probably already impossible to recover some files. Our only goal here is to recover as many files as are possible.
METHOD 2
If you have another method that has worked for you, let us know and we’ll add it here.