Hard Drive Recovery Home Page
hard-drive-recovery-example-050708a.htm
Configuration: Single Seagate ST3500630AS 500GB SATA drive
OS: Windows XP Professional, NTFS
Failure: Multiple bad sector(s) throughout the drive
Hard Drive Recovery Procedure
- step 1: Duplicate as much of the drive as possible to a compatible destination drive (Seagate 750GB)
- step 2: Use COPYHD.exe from Data Recovery,inc.
- step 3: Start cloning from sector 0 to the first set of bad sector(s). If the bad sector is less than sector 6,500,000 then clone backwards (reverse cloning) from sector 7,000,000 back to the beginning. Sector 6,500,000 is the location of the MFT (Master File Table). If not clone backwards from the last sector.
- step 4: Jot down the location of the bad sector areas.
- step 5: You should skip wide areas when hitting a bad sector in order to clone as much of the drive as possible. The drive could die if the bad sector area turns out to be a scratch; so you should avoid these areas as much as possible leaving the bad sector areas until the very last.
- step 6: Since there is always the possibility of the hard drive failing completely, you should always make duplicate copies of the successfully cloned drive at every opportunity.
- step 7: Once you have cloned as much as possible, you can now run Data Recovery Software to recover as much data as possible from the clone of the hard drive.
- step 8: Transfer all data to an external Western Digital Passport USB hard drive.
Further assistance can be found at Data Recovery,inc.
