Attempting to Recover data off a Clicking Hard Drive

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If you like to try a piece of software that MIGHT help you to recover the data. Try SPINRITE. GRC. It does not repair the drive but rather recover the data one last time so you can boot and back it up.

The problem with that is running the drive at all can do further damage. Again, it's best to leave it alone until the OP can have it at least evaluated by a pro and get an estimate for recovery.

 

[slam5]

The problem with that is running the drive at all can do further damage. Again, it's best to leave it alone until the OP can have it at least evaluated by a pro and get an estimate for recovery.

In this case no, the clicking is the sound of the drive trying to read the data. If you go to the end of the video, he will explain to you how the program will recover the data.

 

[Jake snake]

I was able to find out the price of the recovery. I do not feel the cost is equal to the worth of the data on the drive. So I am no longer going to attempt to resurrect or read information from my disk. As of now it's dead to me. If I get the opportunity to get my data recovered by another service for far less I will take that chance. But as of now I will just have it sit in my box of old PC parts.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I was able to find out the price of the recovery. I do not feel the cost is equal to the worth of the data on the drive. So I am no longer going to attempt to resurrect or read information from my disk. As of now it's dead to me. If I get the opportunity to get my data recovered by another service for far less I will take that chance. But as of now I will just have it sit in my box of old PC parts.

You were wise to hold off until you could get an estimate for professional recovery. I'm sorry the news wasn't better. Since you have decided the data on the drive is not worth the cost of recovery (I don't blame you, either; data recovery is expensive and not everyone has that kind of cash available), you have nothing to lose by trying one or more of the recovery programs suggested to see if you just might get lucky (just don't try the idiot freezer trick first).

More important, though, is that you learn from this disaster (polite term; data loss can be a tragedy that's worse than a mere disaster) and make arrangements to backup all your data from now on so, if the something like this ever happens again, you won't also lose your data. Ideally, for data to be reasonably safe, your data needs to exist in at least three places. Usually, that means on the computer, on a backup drive kept onsite disconnected and stored away from the computer except when updating the backup, and on a backup drive kept offsite. The onsite and offsite backups should be swapped out as frequently as possible.

If funds are an issue for buying backup drives, even one backup is still better than nothing and hopefully will tide you over until you can get a second one. Keep in mind that, even though buying and updating backup drives costs money and does involve a little work, it beats the holy hair heck out of professional data recovery that has no guarantee of success.

 

[Jake snake]

I was able to score a new 4 TB drive from a nearby-ish Microcenter for around $100. Is there any special method I should use in order to backup my data? Or is the built in windows backup program sufficient? Also is there a way to backup my other hard drives onto it as well?

 

[Megahertz07]

The backup MUST be saved on separate disk.
My backup drive has Win 7 installed, so I can boot from it and see my working drives as other drive than C:. This makes it easy to backup as the drive I'm making the backup isn't in use.
The backup drive is inside my desktop and is only physically powered (power connector) when I am going to do the backup ( On Fridays) . This way it cant be affected by virus and doesn't spin the rest of the week.
On the backup drive I have a disk image of the whole drive after a fresh installation, a image of the whole drive after Programs and updates and a backup (copy) of \Users\Luiz folder (where my data is).
For images - Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The backup MUST be saved on separate disk.
My backup drive has Win 7 installed, so I can boot from it and see my working drives as other drive than C:. This makes it easy to backup as the drive I'm making the backup isn't in use.
The backup drive is inside my desktop and is only physically powered (power connector) when I am going to do the backup ( On Fridays) . This way it cant be affected by virus and doesn't spin the rest of the week.
On the backup drive I have a disk image of the whole drive after a fresh installation, a image of the whole drive after Programs and updates and a backup (copy) of \Users\Luiz folder (where my data is).
For images - Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Inside your computer is not a good place to have your backup drive, even if kept powered off. If someone stole your computer, your backup would go with it. If the computer got knocked off a desk, any drive inside the computer would be subject to damage.

For data to be reasonably safe, it must exist in three separate places. Usually, that means on drives in the computer, on external drives kept onsite stored separately from the computer, and on external drives that are stored offsite. The latter will protect you from complete data loss should your onsite data (both on the computer and on the onsite backups) be lost to theft, fire, flood, etc.

Also, it is not necessary for a drive to not be in use in order to back it up. Backup programs are perfectly capable of backing up drives that are in use.

Imaging and cloning is necessary for restoring System files (OS and programs). However, I do not recommend cloning for backing up computers. It's designed primarily for duplicating drives, such as moving the contents of a drive to a replacement drive. For backups, it's too bulky and takes too long to update.

Imaging is the best option for backing up System files but also too bulky and time consuming. For that reason, is best to keep data files segregated from system files so different kinds of backup programs that are best suited for backing up a certain type of file can be used. The user folder is not the best place to store data. Data should be kept on a drive or partition other than the C: drive.

Macrium Reflect or other imaging programs (other than Windows imaging feature) are excellent for backing up the C: and System Reserved partitions. Images take up far less room than clones, allowing one to keep multiple images on a backup drive. Imaging only the System files also means the images will be much smaller.

The best way to backup data is to use a folder/file imaging program, such as FreeFileSync or SyncToy. These programs, when set to Mirror (not the same as RAID 1), compare files on a source drive (such as a data drive on a computer) with the ones on a destination drive (such as a backup drive). It will then copy any new or changed files on the source drive to the destination drive and delete any files on the destination drive that are not on the source drive. This results in what is essentially a clone but only the new and changed files are involved in the process instead of the entire drive.

The better folder/file syncing programs also have an optional feature called Versioning. When enabled, Versioning will direct files deleted from the destination drive to a drive or folder of your choice. This will protect you from accidentally deleted files (admit it, we have all done it) and may allow the retrieval of earlier versions of a file.