Storage Hard Drive problem, not sure if broken or something malicious is going on.

I'm having issues with my main hard drive not being (fully) recognised. On booting, it's getting to verifying DMI pool data and then throws a disk failure error, so I looked in the BIOS and it's not detecting my hard drive properly. It doesn't come up as no hard drive, it just comes up as a blank entry, " ", but when you enter it, the header size etc is all 0 and if you click detect, it checks for a while and nothing changes.

I've tried running chkdsk from the Windows 7 disc command prompt but it's telling me that the volume doesn't have direct access, and if I try to chkdsk my working secondary hard drive (which doesn't have windows 7 installed), it works fine, unless I try to do a /r or /x, at which point it tells me I don't have write access.

I thought I'd try to do a memory diagnostic while I was there and it told me that it encountered a problem and to try doing it from within the boot manager of your Windows Disc, which is where I was already doing it from.

Any help with this issue would be great, as my hard drive has a lot of stuff on it that I don't want to lose. I was intending on backing up today as well, which is a pain in the arse.

Thanks.

 

is it making any noise. try different cables.

 

No, it's not making any unusual noises. I'm not sure if it's spinning or anything, I'll check that later. I have tried a different SATA cable, but not a different power cable so I'll try that too once I get home from work.

 

To narrow down your options, I would suggest disconnecting all other drives, and using a known working cable and port (e.g. the one your second drive is connected to) to see if that will get it to be recognised properly. If its still having issues, then at least you know its your drive!

 

Without knowing the MoBo and HDD, and if checking the cables as others have suggested doesn't work.
You could borrow someone else PC and test the HDD in that to see if can be detected, and if the HDD has a sticker with the drives geometry on it you could try entering these setting manually.

 

Is it a Samsung 7200.11 drive? A few models, can't recall which ones atm go a bit funny where the logic board just gives up on living. I had to send mine off to Holland under RMA, they swapped the logic board and all my data was safe. I was effectively locked out of my drive when it died.

 

Just got home from work and plugged it into my spare PC. It is definitely spinning but my spare PC isn't recognising it or letting me access it. It definitely has life at least though.

And it's a Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS. It is 5 or 6 years old, but this has happened over night.

The Mobo on my main PC is an Abit IP-35 PRO. Not entirely sure what my Mobo is on my spare without investigating.

EDIT: It seems to stop spinning after about 10 seconds, but I'm not sure if that's just because it's not being used because I can't access it.

 

You could check to see if the PM2 jumper is set (Warning PDF)http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2579-001037.pdf

It's likely it wont help but worth a try as by the sounds of it the controller board has given up. if the data or drive is important enough you could get a donor HDD (exact same model and size) and replace the board, or maybe find a retailer that sells the right controller board.

 

I just realised that I was doing something stupid. Turns out that the SATA cable I was using wasn't actually plugged into the computer anywhere.

Regardless, I fixed that and it is now coming up on Device Manager but it's still not being recognised properly. This is what I get:



And unfortunately, I don't think I have any jumper pins I can use.

 

So has the cable been unplugged for all your tests or only for the spare pc test?

Try this tool and see what it says:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=606&sid=3&lang=en

 

Only on the Spare PC. Here are the results of the test. I'm going to assume that the pass actually means nothing seeing as a supposed full test completed in 16 seconds. I would also assume that's probably a bad thing? I didn't write zeros because from what I understand it would erase the data I'm trying to recover, unless I misunderstood what it was telling me.

 

That doesn't look right, the extended test might take an hour or two, the quick test maybe 5-10 mins,

Check out the SMART data screen, it shows the 'wanted value' against the 'current value on your disk' to compare in a nice list. If a particular value is off the chart it might indicate where the fault lies.
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I would try wiping the drive using a bootable usb stick ...as a first step.

 

Unfortunately this is my first proper hard drive failure since abou 7 years ago, so I don't really know the options available to me software wise. I am on 64-bit though.

I'll look into other things. Thanks.

 

check out the smart info on that tool.

Also, most partition software comes with a boot disk you can write onto a usb stick, the advantage being you are formatting the dodgy hd from the stick and not from another HD, so it avoids a bunch of conflicts from running an os on another drive, I use paragon as it prepares the usb stick for you, just plug it in and hit button, but you can find free partition boot disk, also before formatting swap the dodgy hd to the 'known to be working' sata port(used by the os) on mobo.

 

I want to avoid formatting as I want the data off of it, but regardless it seems to get stuck scanning for disks in safe mode but doesn't pick it up in normal mode. I've Emailed Western Digital to to see what they have to say too.

It does spin and get warm however, which I think is a good sign?

EDIT: And now Paragon appears to have upset my spare pc hard drive as it doesn't want to boot any more even though I didn't perform any operations on it. My fault for leaving it plugged in first time around but still irritating as hell. I'm not as fussed about reformatting the spare but I'd obviously like to avoid that too.

 

Might be worth seeing what the smart tab on Argus Monitor says, I presume both the drive and your motherboard support smart?

 

I believe so but I won't be able to check until after work in about 11 hours.

 

Logic board has gone, the platters are still there, but the coms between the controller and the platters has died.

 

Off topic, fixed my spare PC.

On topic, sounds like the best thing that could've gone wrong. I wouldn't trust fixing it myself, so would it be better to send to WD or Data Recovery guys? And what kind of price could I expect?

Thanks to everyone for all the help so far.

 

Talk to WD, data recovery guys charge huge sums, when my Samsung took a dump I got quotes from 5 separate companies all quoting vastly north of £1K to recovery the data. At the time the drive held all the design files for the company I was working at, it fell over during a backup that corrupted the backed up directory. Cluster f**k came to mind when it happened.

I called Samsung, told them the issue and model number and the tech said "oh one of those, errr hang on.... (5 minute wait), Hi I think you'll find your drive is suddenly back in warranty... cough, cough don't ask"

Delivery driver picked it up Monday morning, to be sent to Holland that day. Got a phone call from a Tech engineer direct from Holland Tuesday afternoon telling me the issue and how it was resolved (yes resolved). They ripped the logic board off, and did a raw dump from the platters to a new drive. Was on my door step Wednesday morning.

I think the IT gods were looking out for me when this cluster f**K happened, all I did was call Samsung tech support, and to remember my please's and thank you's.