Unmountuble corrupt hard drive

Hy everybody,

I have received a huge problem. One day i had left my windows 7 running and later when i came back i saw black screen with ctr+alt+delete. After rebooting a disccheck went trough and i saw an error message "Recovering orphaned file xxxx. Insufficient disk space to recover lost data." It tried to recover a few files but it didnt manage to.
Since then my OS doesnt boot, only black srceen with reboot.

I have tried to run chkdsk on my harddrive but it sad that the drive is corrupt and it couldnt fix it. I have tried every command which could make any changes put no use!
So i booted from Gparted and it saw my volumes and determined as NTFS partitions. I tried to fix with that but got another error massage "$MFT read error". So basically it doesnt do anything, even formatting.

To day the whole drive got invisible. Neither Gparted, Windows or any OS recognize it! If i run chkdsk C: /f /x Command Prompt says:"Cannot access the drive directly".The BIOS shows my hard drive and eve SMART Monitoring is available! During Gparted boot it writes out things like "Input/Output error, UNC error and cannot access to sda".

PLEASE HELP! Im a noob and really confused. I only want to save my data from volume D:, i have a lot of important file there. My hard drive is a Seagate 7200.12 500gb.
Is my hdd is screwed up? Is there any fix? Do i have a physical hard drive fail?

I tried to save my data with True Image but it doesnt see the partitions or anything!

Thanks in advance!

,Joey

I think that your HD is toast. But there is a little glimmer of hope. After you have tried everything and you are ready to destroy it, put it in the freezer over night. The next morning, see if you can get the data. I got this information from Kim Komando, famous radio show host for computer call in questions. Of course this is the last step, before you destroy it. Hope it all works out for you.

Thanks richc46 for the reply,

yes i already heard about this so it seems the time has come to try it out.
Anyway i found another hdd somewhere in this mess so i found back ups as well.

So the new problem is that i cannot format my drive with the original Seagate software, SeaTools. During test i get an error massege: "DST FAILED" and "Read Element LBA=xxxxx error". Now i only want my drive to be functional and erased, nothing else.
Ill try your method as well as searching this problem so we will see what happens.

You should try the fix by Richie, then if it doesnt work, go to Gparted (in ubuntu?) and make sure that the drive is unmounted. Next attempt to format it again. If this fails, can you browse the drive in ubuntu (or any other OS you have there) ?

Is S.M.A.R.T enabled on the drive? Dig around in your BIOS to find out. Make sure it is enabled, and see if it gives you any messages during Startup.

Freezing had no effect, everything remained the same. s.m.a.r.t. was enabled all the time, i changed cables if it would be the problem, but no use. No other OS recognizes the hdd. I had begun to repair the bad sectors with SeaTools but there is one that it couldnt manage to fix.
I think the last chance is the warranty exchange. There were no physical damage on hard drive, power supply is sufficient and the case is cooled properly, so still no idea about the problem.

Summary:
Windows 7 crashed, rebooted
CHKDSK went through, couldnt recover orphaned files
Hard drive input/output errors
Bad sectors cannot be fixed
No access to hard drive

I will show it to a professional, and share any useful information.
Thanks for the assistance guys!

Joey1052 said:

Freezing had no effect, everything remained the same. s.m.a.r.t. was enabled all the time, i changed cables if it would be the problem, but no use. No other OS recognizes the hdd. I had begun to repair the bad sectors with SeaTools but there is one that it couldnt manage to fix.
I think the last chance is the warranty exchange. There were no physical damage on hard drive, power supply is sufficient and the case is cooled properly, so still no idea about the problem.

Summary:
Windows 7 crashed, rebooted
CHKDSK went threw, couldnt recover orphaned files
Hard drive input/output errors
Bad sectors cannot be fixed
No access to hard drive

I will show it to a professional, and share any useful information.
Thanks for the assistance guys!

Click to expand...

Guys like Richie, Jonathan and GregRocker are probably a lot more professional than that guy at the market. Still, he will actually be able to see the computer unlike us =/
Good luck with that, happy christmas

What was the SMART report?

SMART reported to be enabled and working. Although i tried to fix the hard drive with SeaTools, it found bad sectors which cannot be fixed. So i have to use the warranty exchange. Thats my only hope...

Anyway i didnt mean to query anyones knowledge here. Under professional i meant i guy who i know and is dealing with corrupt hard drives and data recovery. I would never call those guys in the shop professional

So most of my data is saved. But the corrupt part of the hard drive is unreachable :S I cannot format it or anything.

So the next question is what could cause this failure???? My only guess is a virus that could made this... Or it was really a technical problem? Than it is quite disconcerting from a leading company like Seagate :S

Thanks everybody for the suggestions and support!
Happy New Year!

The truth is that any piece of Hardware can fail. No electronic device is perfectly reliable.

A tiny little glitch in something as delicate as a hard drive can cause it to fail in time.

Another reason electronics can fail is electrical surges. Are you using a surge protector?

Jonathan_King said:

The truth is that any piece of Hardware can fail. No electronic device is perfectly reliable.

A tiny little glitch in something as delicate as a hard drive can cause it to fail in time.

Another reason electronics can fail is electrical surges. Are you using a surge protector?

Click to expand...

No there is no surge protector. I know that it is not an excuse but i have got a new FSP power supply. It should have contain surge protection, does it?

Everything works fine but the hard drive. I remember i used Norton 2009. Is there any bug with that? Can a virus cause a whole drive to be corrupt?

Ive just handed in my hard drive for warranty exchange so i will post what were the results a.s.a.p. i get it back!

cheers!

Anything can happen to an electronic device, especially a mechanical one. Slight power fluctuations, too much heat, a bump or jar, faulty circuitry, anything can cause a hard drive to fail.