Hard drive can not be access I/O error. Data recovery needed. Please help

I hope you have a back up of your files, scan the drive with UBD4 or Seagate utility to check for bad sectors with an attempt to recover any if found. Format the drive and reinstall if necessary.

There is no data backup. all the data is on a faulty hard drive. I would like to retrive at least iTunes....

This is a Toshiba hard drive  MK5055GSX

attach it to an external hard drive reader and see if you can pull the files that way

what do you mean the external hard drive reader

An external enclosure that will read a hard drive, you can find them at any computer store. Or you might even know someone who owns one. Google search (External SATA Enclosure)

Try running check disk  chkdsk /f on the partition you want to access....


If that is not successful Spinrite is a great tool but its not free

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I would scan for viruses and spyware as well

Chkdsk can actually do more harm than good in this situation.  Chkdsk  will blow away what may be recoverable files, and if your disk is a ticking bomb, meaning you have little pieces of ferromagnetic material flying around at 7200 RPM inside, then any I/O will make things worse

1. If budget allows, $500+, and data is worth that much to you, then contact a professional data recovery firm.
2. For a DIY, spinrite is as good as any of them.
3. Putting it into an external reader will not help in any way, this is classic partial media failure.  

There is an outside chance this may be caused by a virus, but odds are very much against that.  Doing a virus scan can make things worse. No matter what, decide quickly, keep disk powered off until you are ready to recover.   Every moment the disk is turned on could be the last one.

Bits - I'm very tempted to hook up an analyzer to a running copy of HDD regenerator.  Frankly, my expectation is that their algorithm is not much more than ...



for (BlockNo = 0; BlockNo < Capacity; BlockNo++)  {
  StartTimer(0);
  for (ReReadcount=0; ReReadCount < UserDefinedRetries; ReReadCount++) {
     if (ReadAndRecoverIfPossible(BlockNo) == SUCCESS)
         break;
     if (StartTimer(UserSelectedTimeout) == EXPIRED)
         break;
  }
}

No CHKDSK! The guys above absolutely right. Chkdsk often does severe damage to the data.
The problem could be with Windows trying to access the partitions.
Try to get to this drive from non Windows mode.
Download free Rescue Kit tool from this link: http://download.cnet.com/Rescue-Kit-Express/3000-2094_4-10910591.html
As soon as you download it execute the file and let it burn itself to CD.
Boot the laptop or any other PC with this drive connected from Rescue Kit CD.
Select Normal Mode - File Transfer Wizard. Try to browse your partitions and copy out data from the drive to another drive.

the hard drive does not make any clicking noise/sound. I tired to run a rescue kit with a oprion of data transfer/recovery from a deifferent vendor. It always works, however this time it could not scan the disk connected to one of the USB ports on my laptop. I know that HDD regenrator can run for days. I used it once but gave up 7 days of working on a hard drive. I might give it a try once again.
Can HDD regenerator scan and deal with a hard drive connected to a USB port on a laptop?

i have run it on 40 - 80 Gb drives in about 6-8 hrs
it does NOT support usb, you have to connect the drive directly to an IDE or Sata port

The thing is that I do not suspect the hard drive to be damaged. It is visible under the system.
The disc I was trying to regenerate using HDD regenarator before was a sata one of 250GB.

I am running HDD regenerator. It is just a beginning and it already found 34 bad sectors which have been repaired.

It the software goes through the whole hard drive and repair all bad sectors would I be able to recover the data by connecting the drive through USB cable to another laptop?
38 bad sectors...
Cheers

I'm glad to hear that you had the HDD Regenerator... it really pays for itself.
"...It the software goes through the whole hard drive and repair all bad sectors would I be able to recover the data by connecting the drive through USB cable to another laptop?..." if it gets repaired... Yes. You may, after recovering the data even be able to boot to it.
I have noticed though, that after running either HDD Regenerator or SpinRite that you always, well, at least I have, needed to run Chkdsk after. Make sure you try to recover the data first.
Bits ...

do not use chkdsk, it is more concerned with giving up on broken files then worrying about the data integrity.  use the runtime.org NTFS product.  If you have any corruption at all in the MBR, partition tables, or parts of the filesystem that say where the rest of files are, or where they start ... chkdsk will just blow them off and move on, and you'll lose that data.

The runtime.org software will probably run all weekend, but it takes stance that anything can be broken, so it will manually reconstruct (hence the name) the filesystem via basically a brute force algorithm.   It is free to try,and will even let you look at files it recovers, but you buy if you want to save them.

i would look if the data can be accessed after HDDREg terminates.
you cna still try the other options then..

Cheers

VERY IMPORTANT ...

You MUST keep the hdd regenerator log of bad and recovered blocks.  Then pipe them into the runtime.org product so it knows what blocks were "repaired". it does not need to know about recovered blocks, because, by definition the data was recovered via the brute force re-reads.

The reason is let us assume block #100 was repaired by hdd regenerator, and block #100 was part of a data file or worse, an important EXE/DLL or registry hive.

Net result is you now have 512 bytes of zero at the remapped block #100.    So whatever file that block #100 belonged to is now corrupted.  The runtime product needs to know that block #100 now has incorrect data.   So by telling runtime's reconstructor block #100 is corrupted, you can learn the name of the corrupted file and mark it as corrupted.

This way there are no surprises. You know what files are corrupted.

If you just run chkdsk, then chkdsk has no idea that this particular file is corrupted, unless the damaged 512 bytes appears at beginning of file, (which means it will just toss it away or somewhere else that causes a checksum to be incorrect).

So by doing this multi-pass recovery you get better results.

you don't need all that ...if it's repaired it's ok. period.
just my experience with it !

So what does HDD regenerator do with a file that has an unrecoverable read error in it?   Very curious. Does it properly report this?

Your priorities are:
1) Save your data
2) Repair your disk

The first thing you should do is GET THE DATA OFF THE DISK using a tool that images the drive so that it can be analyzed later at your leisure. I have successfully used R-Studio, but others may work better. I have even used Ubuntu to read files from an NTFS partition that Windows itself reported as RAW.

The fact that the drive is recognized correctly only means that the electronics work. If the drive surface is damaged, the more it spins the worse it gets. Trying to fix it in that case may only make it worse.

So get your DATA first, and then you can try to 'fix' the drive.

it reports it as unrecoverable - that's why i said : if it's repaired !

tx for the feedback - and have a nice day !

Hello Remap,
You chose for the "Accepted Solution" the same answer I had offered nearly 6 hours before in my CommentID: 29405464. I'm assuming that you may have not noticed.
Bits ...

I stand up with Bits here. He was the first who did suggest HDDRegenerator if it did really help. His answer CommentID: 29405464 gives the suggestion clearly so best to accept it and as assisted by nobus comment ID: 29431393.
I guess nobus will not object.

i won't object to anything, but on EE not always the first reference is honored; i had several such cases myself.
maybe my explanation was liked better?

Hi guys,

I am sorry for a dealy in replying but the life was very busy recently with the second baby.
I appreciate all you effort and suggestions in helping me. Bits you suggested to try HDD Reg and even brought some technical explanation about the whole process. Thanks. I must say I was not thinking of trying to use it until nobus made his comments about HDD Reg which were backed up with some examples

"...i can tell it has recovered for me already 3 disks, reported BAD by diags, and unaccessable. - 1 was even blocking up Spinrite....but HDD reg did work.."

and at this point I was convinced to use it. As you can see I have not forgotten about your suggestions on HDD Reg and awarded you with points. In my view you both deserved points and that was what I did. I must agree with nobus "... on EE not always the first reference is honored..." it is the way the answer is formed.

I hope that my explanation is clear

I have just posted a reply

Thanks for the feedback Remap... I appreciate it.
Actually... you had left me out when awarding the points... this is why I asked if you had "not noticed" my comment recommending HDD Regenerator.
I would never recommend something that I have not tested myself and if I suggest to someone try something, I'll tell them to try and specifically mention that I haven't tested...
Thanks again for coming back and providing some feedback.
Bits...

Bits,

If I had left you out than I do apologise. Is there a way I can change that and award you points. I was certain I did that...

No problem. I was just trying to understand. The question is open again. You are now able to re-award/re-assign points. Thanks again.

Great stuff. Many thanks again for helping and speak to you soon.