HDD Crash - Ubuntu 8.10 sees partitions, cannot access?!

Hello ppl,

So a couple of days ago my HDD in my Vaio SZ61NC crashed; stalled while working under XP, now gives a SMART drive Failure on boot-up, and cannot find the operating system anymore. And of course: my last backup dates from September last year

Desperately seeking any information on how to recover the data, I decided to give the LiveCD utility of Ubuntu 8.10 a try.

Interestingly, all partitions present on the HDD show up using the LiveCD. However, they cannot be mounted and data is not accessible.

Can anyone provide me with some help regarding this issue? For example:
- does the fact that my partitions show up in Ubuntu mean that they can actually be recovered?
- if yes, which tool would be suitable for this?

All help would be greatly appreciated! Of course I could bring the disc to one of the bigger data recovery companies, but if a better (= cheaper & easier & faster) solution would be available...

Thanks in advance for your input & Regards,
Pieter

 

Unfortunately a S.M.R.T drive failure usually means a hardware failure. Therefore, even though you could see the partitions you might not be able to read all the data. Information of the partitions (partition table) is stored in the very first part of the HDD. Ubuntu displaying your partitions only means the partition table is readable, that doesn’t necessarily mean data in those partitions are accessible.

There are few data recovery tools you can try out, but you won’t be able to do much with a Live CD, I suggest you connect it to a different PC (preferably running Windows) with a USB enclosure. I have not recovered data from a damaged partition, but I have recovered data from an accidentally deleted partition with a tool called getdataback. There are many such tools out there, maybe some one else can help you with a better tool. In any case you'll first need an external enclosure.

 

Once I managed to recover most of the data from a drive with a failed controller. Program I used was EasyRecovery Pro. I was really surprised with its abilities.

 

I too would recommend Easy Recovery Pro, it has saved me several times before, most recently when i messed up and after trying w7 converted my partitions to dynamic ones, then converted back to one standard one, installed XP with a quick format option and it still found a big chunk of my old data. If it is a Hardware failure, your only option would be to probably send it out and pay some $

 

OK people, thanks to you all for the input! I just purchased a 2.5"-3.5" adapter, and will try EasyRecovery Pro and see what that does...

BTW, couldn't it be that the partitions aren't visible due to the fact that Ubuntu doesn't support NTFS? Just curious...

Regards,
Pieter

 

Ubuntu support NTFS fine. What kind of message did it gave you when you tried to mount the partition? Have you tried to force the mount?

 

Yeah, I tried to mount the volume, but the message was something like: "cannot mount the volume" (cannot remember it exactly).

Indeed Ubuntu gave the recommendation to try to force-mount the drive, but I haven't tried that yet. People got me scared lately; I don't feel like doing any more damage than has already been done...

Would it "hurt" / damage the HDD if I were to force-mount the drive?

Pieter