spydeyrch
December 23rd, 2009, 06:38 PM
Hey guys, thought I would post something that might be helpful to others and seeing as it deals with windows, I felt like it would be more appropriate here than in the general help threads or hardware threads but feel free to move it if needs be.
My story:
I have a friend who's family has been good friends with mine. I built them a new computer a few years back and got them out of the confines of a pre-built, manufatured controlled system. Needless to say, they loved it! It wasn't a huge gamers system but it wasn't low end either. they could play crysis at 1024x768 in medium details. they loved it.
Well about a year into owing the computer, the HDD started to go bad. I would recover it with check disk and make sure everything was good on it. A few times I had to reinstall the entire system but I was always able to get access to it via a second computer and therefore able to backup their files prior to a fresh reinstall.
This last time though, it was a huge problem. the computer just crashed one day and when they tryed to turn on the computer, it would hang at POST. I took out the drive and put it in my system, the bios would hang at POST too, at the same tie it was trying to access the HDD that was going bad. I tried everything!!! I tried hot swapping it while windows was up, I tried hot swapping it with ubuntu, which was installed as my second os. I tried mounting it by using a live cd (both *buntu & knoppix). Nothing would get this drive to get detected. Everything woudl hang. I even got as desperate as doing a platter swap and seeing if I could do that. But i held off and stored the drive for about 7 months.
Then last night, it hit me!! I had recently read an article about freezing a HDD to possibly get access to the files. So I pulled it out of storage and threw it in the freezer. After which I started to read how to do it. Should have read how to do it before doing it. I was supposed to put it in a plastic bag and THEN into the freezer. Too late!!! but I had another great idea. After about 4 hours of chilling, I pulled the HDD and put it into a container of uncooked rice!!
The rice sucks up any condensation. I hooked it up to my system, and it got threw POST, loaded up windows, installed the drivers for the drive. I opened my computer and there it was, but it didn't show the drive space remaing/used. It gave the drives name and then showed NTFS under the name. I tried to open it but got an error message saying I didn't have permission to do so. So I opened up the properties and security details. I took ownership of the drive. It took about 15 mins to change ownership on the drive. After which I tried to access the drive again. Still same error. so I restarted and booted in to my ubuntu system. it recognized the drive but when I tried to mount it through the places menu, it gave me an error message of basically (I don't remember the exact words): "unable to mount /dev/sdb to /media/..... must mount as root" So I opened up a terminal and tried to mount it as root, but got the same message, kind of strange.
So after I tried to do the same thing on a live cd of knoppix, I kind of gave up a little. until I decided to run check disk again. I ran check disk for about 3 hours. After which I tried to get access to the drive via windows and ubuntu, both which gave me the "do not have permissions" and "need to be root" messages. the wierd thing was that if I tried to save a file to them, say one that I downloaded from the internet, it would allow me to browse through the file contents of the drive using the "save file" window. I could see all the folders and files and I could save to it but I couldn't get to the folders/files through normal folder/file explorer/file manager. Also, every file and folder icon had a padlock sign on it, so I knew that it was locked. But i had previously taken ownership of the entire drive sot hat shouldn't matter anymore. It was very frustrating!!!
So I threw the drive back into the freezer at about 1am this morning and went to bed, with thoughts of solutions floating in my mind as I slept. I woke up bright and early this morning and decided to try one more time. I took out the drive, put it in the rice, and then connected it to my computer. I booted up windows 7 and then took a look at the drive, it still showed the NTFS under the drive name and still said that I didn't have permission to access the drive. I checked the ownerhsip of the drive and it still showed that I was the owner. Not just the admin group but my actual user in the admin group was the owner.
I started to look through the permissions settings and noticed that even though I was set as the owner, I did not have a permissions level granted to me on the drive. Really it shouldn't matter as far as I remember but I decided to give it a go. I gave myself permissions to read, write, change, full, etc. to the drive and it's contents. Then I tried to open the drive.
BAM!!! All the files were present in front of me!! I started to copy them ASAP to a folder on my system drive. I couldn't believe it. It had actually worked!! Freezing it allowed me to get it past post and into the system. After which just some settings tweaks and I was good to go!!
I got almost all the files before the drive died on me again. So I threw it back into the freezer with the hopes that it will last 20 more mins for me to get the remaining files off of it.
My friend thought that she had lost ALL her pics of her children growing up and family. Basically her whole digital lifebook was recovered. What a great Christmas gift for her!!! I have pressed EXTENSIVELY the need to do weekly backups.
I would like to know if anyoe else has tried this method of freezing a HDD and if it worked. Also, what other ways have you used to get data recovered. Enjoy!!
-Spydey :guitar:
My story:
I have a friend who's family has been good friends with mine. I built them a new computer a few years back and got them out of the confines of a pre-built, manufatured controlled system. Needless to say, they loved it! It wasn't a huge gamers system but it wasn't low end either. they could play crysis at 1024x768 in medium details. they loved it.
Well about a year into owing the computer, the HDD started to go bad. I would recover it with check disk and make sure everything was good on it. A few times I had to reinstall the entire system but I was always able to get access to it via a second computer and therefore able to backup their files prior to a fresh reinstall.
This last time though, it was a huge problem. the computer just crashed one day and when they tryed to turn on the computer, it would hang at POST. I took out the drive and put it in my system, the bios would hang at POST too, at the same tie it was trying to access the HDD that was going bad. I tried everything!!! I tried hot swapping it while windows was up, I tried hot swapping it with ubuntu, which was installed as my second os. I tried mounting it by using a live cd (both *buntu & knoppix). Nothing would get this drive to get detected. Everything woudl hang. I even got as desperate as doing a platter swap and seeing if I could do that. But i held off and stored the drive for about 7 months.
Then last night, it hit me!! I had recently read an article about freezing a HDD to possibly get access to the files. So I pulled it out of storage and threw it in the freezer. After which I started to read how to do it. Should have read how to do it before doing it. I was supposed to put it in a plastic bag and THEN into the freezer. Too late!!! but I had another great idea. After about 4 hours of chilling, I pulled the HDD and put it into a container of uncooked rice!!
The rice sucks up any condensation. I hooked it up to my system, and it got threw POST, loaded up windows, installed the drivers for the drive. I opened my computer and there it was, but it didn't show the drive space remaing/used. It gave the drives name and then showed NTFS under the name. I tried to open it but got an error message saying I didn't have permission to do so. So I opened up the properties and security details. I took ownership of the drive. It took about 15 mins to change ownership on the drive. After which I tried to access the drive again. Still same error. so I restarted and booted in to my ubuntu system. it recognized the drive but when I tried to mount it through the places menu, it gave me an error message of basically (I don't remember the exact words): "unable to mount /dev/sdb to /media/..... must mount as root" So I opened up a terminal and tried to mount it as root, but got the same message, kind of strange.
So after I tried to do the same thing on a live cd of knoppix, I kind of gave up a little. until I decided to run check disk again. I ran check disk for about 3 hours. After which I tried to get access to the drive via windows and ubuntu, both which gave me the "do not have permissions" and "need to be root" messages. the wierd thing was that if I tried to save a file to them, say one that I downloaded from the internet, it would allow me to browse through the file contents of the drive using the "save file" window. I could see all the folders and files and I could save to it but I couldn't get to the folders/files through normal folder/file explorer/file manager. Also, every file and folder icon had a padlock sign on it, so I knew that it was locked. But i had previously taken ownership of the entire drive sot hat shouldn't matter anymore. It was very frustrating!!!
So I threw the drive back into the freezer at about 1am this morning and went to bed, with thoughts of solutions floating in my mind as I slept. I woke up bright and early this morning and decided to try one more time. I took out the drive, put it in the rice, and then connected it to my computer. I booted up windows 7 and then took a look at the drive, it still showed the NTFS under the drive name and still said that I didn't have permission to access the drive. I checked the ownerhsip of the drive and it still showed that I was the owner. Not just the admin group but my actual user in the admin group was the owner.
I started to look through the permissions settings and noticed that even though I was set as the owner, I did not have a permissions level granted to me on the drive. Really it shouldn't matter as far as I remember but I decided to give it a go. I gave myself permissions to read, write, change, full, etc. to the drive and it's contents. Then I tried to open the drive.
BAM!!! All the files were present in front of me!! I started to copy them ASAP to a folder on my system drive. I couldn't believe it. It had actually worked!! Freezing it allowed me to get it past post and into the system. After which just some settings tweaks and I was good to go!!
I got almost all the files before the drive died on me again. So I threw it back into the freezer with the hopes that it will last 20 more mins for me to get the remaining files off of it.
My friend thought that she had lost ALL her pics of her children growing up and family. Basically her whole digital lifebook was recovered. What a great Christmas gift for her!!! I have pressed EXTENSIVELY the need to do weekly backups.
I would like to know if anyoe else has tried this method of freezing a HDD and if it worked. Also, what other ways have you used to get data recovered. Enjoy!!
-Spydey :guitar: