SATA drives + recovery tools

1) What's your experience with SATA hard disk drives?

I have a fairly new system and the Maxtor drive has just gone up the spout with a major error causing WinXP to fail in all avaliable boot modes.
I'm sure I read on the Blitz forums that SATA hard disks are unrealiable.

2) Are there any CD-bootable HD tools out there for recovering hard disk data?

Since XP could not be booted up at all I was left with the useless advice of using CHKDSK /F to attempt a repair. However, this is not possible since XP has no immediate DOS mode or floppy disk bootup method.

I've got two SATAs 250Gb and 160GB and they are fine. You can pay for GetBack, it works REALLY well and pay for either FAT32 or NTFS version. I put my drive in another system and ran Getback in windows, don't know if you can put it on a CD. Alternatively take a look at the System Rescue CD here http://www.sysresccd.org/ and see if it has the right tools. The CD has loads of cool free stuff on it.

You *should* have an XP CD with a legal copy, you can boot from it and go into the recovery console and do chkdsk there, so the advice is not useless. Plus there is more stuff you can do than chkdsk in recovery console.

My Advent system never came with an installation CD. This can only be created via a 'Make a recovery disc' from within a XP menu option. Unfortunately, the recovery CD only gives me 3 options:

1) Restore complete O/S installation (wiping everything out)
2) Repair O/S (which crashes halfway through the process)
3) Ignore and boot as normal

Looks like there is something seriously wrong with the HD though. Even an attempt to use it as a slave unit still causes my system to shutdown and restart. Worrying.

I'll see if the Sytem Rescue CD method helps. Thanks Jake.

good luck.

System Recovery CD helped. Although it failed to boot to the main menu (these Linux setups always fail for me) it did have a handy FreeDOS option which I used to delete the offending XP partition.
Thanks Grey!

cool, so can get your data OK?

Hi,

if you've had a headcrash or some other usual stuff has happend like oopsa my laptop has fallen into the sea then you could call these guys.

They are pretty good at recovering lost data but only adviseable if you really have some important data on your hd as it's quite expensive...

http://www.vogon-international.co.uk/


Greetings,

taumel

Don't you just hate it when that happens! :P

Only if my leg is bleeding and there are sharks nearby... ;O)

I managed to copy over the separate partitions. It's the main XP partition with 'My Documents' which is going to be a pain.
I've had to erase/remove this partition just to get the drive to act as a slave. Hopefully I can now recover the partition and copy it into one of the spare (backed up) partitions.

More importantly, I got all my Blitzmax source code back!

tip: don't use My Documents, store data on a different partition. (I know it's a case of horse has bolted etc)

glad u got our code back woo!

btw have you been reading the recent backup thread, think about it dude!

I keep my most valuable files [like my documents, outlook etc..] on a seperate partition/hd. Using Microsoft TweakUI you can specify/change the location of most system folders...
It allows me to change/refresh the windows partition on a regular base..
Ghislain

Ive bought about 14 hd over the years, the only one to fail is my 1 year old SATA.

I've purchased probably the same number of drives over the past 12 years.

My 80MB (that's not a typo) 2.5" drive lasted even after I took it to bits and put fingerprints all over the platter.

My 700MB Quantum died and Quantum really screwed up the replacement process.

My 1.6GB Seagate probably still works (it did the last time I installed Linux on it).

My 4 40GB IBM drives are on their way out. 1 died already.

My 2 60GB Maxtors lasted well. One went a bit dodgy and only the last 50GB was usable until the day (last week) it just died completely. Both drives had been used in a 24x7 environment for over 18 months.

My 2 120GB Maxtors are doing fine in my new server machine. No longer runs 24x7 because...

My 300GB Maxtor MaxLine III (heavy duty) SATA sits nice and quietly in my new PC.

There were other drives I had, but they got sold with old PC's etc.



The only realy difference between an PATA and a SATA drive are the attached electronics. The drive mechanics are exactly the same between the two versions. Hence, the machanical parts are no more likely to fail.

How SATA controller boards stack up against PATA ones in reliability, only time will tell. Personally, I have no misgivings about having a SATA drive as my only HD in the PC.

If the thing fails tomorrow, I'll lose a hell of a lot of data, but then again I do have the most important stuff backed up.... on the internet.

Of course one day probably all info will be on the internet and backed up automatically, there won't be a need to keep local info at all.

Now all you have to do is hope that Microsoft won't make it mandatory. I'm sure that holding all your data hostage would be their ultimate dream.

Then you can be charged to access your own data. Mind you in a way you are now as you have to buy a harddrive and OS etc.

But that's a 'one time' fee, as opposed to a monthly 'hold-my-data-hostage' subscription.

Microsoft has hinted on plenty of occasions that their long-term vision would be a 'rental' model where you wouldn't have to worry your pretty little head about buying, installing & maintaining your own software and data, they would wish to take care of all that for you.

For a modest recurring fee of course.

So...
Nice files you got there. Shame if anything should... happen to them. Real shame.

exactly, I don't like it.