Convert raw to NTFS

[alphaamanitin]

I really need that data, that's true.
But I can't afford the 720€... at least at the moment...
I am not sure if I can buy this drive because it's an old model...
It's not available in my country anymore.

After replacing the heads, should I do something concerning the firmware?

I sent mine to Drive Savers, they pay for the overnight shipping to them, will review it for free and shoot you a price, and offer payment plans. The payment plans suck, only spread out over three months. However, if you are a student they might be willing to give you a discount, they offered me one but it was still too expensive for my poor grad student butt. If you chose not to, they will overnight the drive back to you for free (or at least in the USA I should say for shipping). They were nice and professional.

AlphaA

[AAEIV]

I really doubt if this can apply to me...becuase it's going to be an oversea shipping from USA to Greece.

My contact person to seagate actually offered me a discount...
Starting price was 940€ and he provided me a 140€ discount, meaning 800€ plus 10% morew meaning 720€.

He also told me to split the price into 4 parts with no additional interest and if I cannot pay every month he offered me a time range of 6 months...

But still it's too much for me.

Just to give you a hint, I need about two weeks to find the shipping price, which is 40€...

[AAEIV]

Just for the record, Seagate reports

We have finished examining all physical and logical components of your storage media. The main cause of damage is bad blocks which are present on the media, as well as media surface damage which prevents the read write heads from locating the data stored on the platters.
For the recovery process we need to analyze and repair these bad blocks, read out all data on a sector level, and reconstruct the complete file system. Afterwards we will mount the data onto an offline server in order to check the integrity of your data(partitions, directories and the different file types).

Evaluation report:

Drive very unstable Heads#5 very unstable Present many media errors, heads unstable read. Probably later need explant new heads.

[oldfred]

If the heads are working you can do most of that yourself. It just is how bad is drive? Once mechanically so bad then there is nothing you can do.

You can do an image back up, and run e2fsck to clear bad blocks or chkdsk if NTFS. You may be able to run photorec and recover a lot of data also.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


Several of the tools shown in DataRecovery link are identical or similar to the tools they use.

[AAEIV]

The thing is that this drive couldn't be accessed.
As a result no operation could be applied there...

Seagate claimed that this issue could be fixed by analyzing and repairing these bad blocks, reading out all data on a sector level, and reconstructing the complete file system.

How can this be done?

[oldfred]

Perhaps it was like some of the links where just a new PC board was required. Maybe a bad PC board caused some of the damage.

Did you try any of the old last thing to try like freezing, thumping or others that may temporarily let you read something?

[CharlesA]

I really need that data, that's true.
But I can't afford the 720€... at least at the moment...

If you have valuable data, keep regular backups of it. I've lost data before and data recovery was going to cost several thousand dollars, so I just used it as a learning experience.

The thing is that this drive couldn't be accessed.
As a result no operation could be applied there...

If it is detected by the BIOS, you might be able to use ddrescue to copy it to another drive, but if the data is unreadable, you are probably still going to be stuck.

Personally, I would do the data recovery if the data is that important, even though it costs a ton.

[alphaamanitin]

If you have valuable data, keep regular backups of it. I've lost data before and data recovery was going to cost several thousand dollars, so I just used it as a learning experience.



If it is detected by the BIOS, you might be able to use ddrescue to copy it to another drive, but if the data is unreadable, you are probably still going to be stuck.

Personally, I would do the data recovery if the data is that important, even though it costs a ton.

He doesn't have the funds, period. He said earlier that it would take him two weeks to work up the 40 euro shipping fee. He is simply, SOL. Per the quote sent by Seagate, "physical damage to the surface" is part of the problem. I don't think he will be able to recover anything, even using ddrescue. Nevertheless, as he simply doesn't have the money it may be worth trying ddrescue even if it destroys the drive while doing it. It does seem that he will not be able to pay to recover data, and unless the data can wait years for recovery...

AlphaA

[AAEIV]

Perhaps it was like some of the links where just a new PC board was required. Maybe a bad PC board caused some of the damage.

Did you try any of the old last thing to try like freezing, thumping or others that may temporarily let you read something?

To be honest I didn't try freezing or thumbing(I believe you mean pusing down the drive with my hand).
Two day ago I saw a video of a woman putting her hdd to the freezer for an hour and this method worked!!!
I will try it as soon as I get the drive back.

If you have valuable data, keep regular backups of it. I've lost data before and data recovery was going to cost several thousand dollars, so I just used it as a learning experience.



If it is detected by the BIOS, you might be able to use ddrescue to copy it to another drive, but if the data is unreadable, you are probably still going to be stuck.

Personally, I would do the data recovery if the data is that important, even though it costs a ton.

The thing is that I learned a lot during this period because of this issue...
TO run ddrescue the hdd has to be in the list when running "sudo fdisk -l", which is not the case right here...
It really costs a ton;I will have to wait ~2years to find that money...

He doesn't have the funds, period. He said earlier that it would take him two weeks to work up the 40 euro shipping fee. He is simply, SOL. Per the quote sent by Seagate, "physical damage to the surface" is part of the problem. I don't think he will be able to recover anything, even using ddrescue. Nevertheless, as he simply doesn't have the money it may be worth trying ddrescue even if it destroys the drive while doing it. It does seem that he will not be able to pay to recover data, and unless the data can wait years for recovery...

AlphaA

What is a SOL?
Can ddrescue destroy the drive?How?

[CharlesA]

To be honest I didn't try freezing or What is a SOL?
Can ddrescue destroy the drive?How?

It means "Out of luck" with a few extra words.

If you don't see the drive in fdisk, I don't think ddrescue will work.

At least you have gotten a lesson on why keeping backups of your data is a good idea.