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General discussion

Get data off unreadable HDD

Jan 7, 2011 4:00AM PST

My friend has a Samsung HD103UJ HDD, 1TB, and he used it to put his pictures of family from Russia (his home country) before upgrading his Windows XP to 7. After the install, he went to put the pictures back, only to get a message telling him to reformat. So he called me and I plugged it into my laptop with Windows XP, only to get the same message.

He doesn't have money to spend on getting these pictures back, so I was wondering I anyone knew of a way to get pictures from a HDD that isn't readable by Windows XP or 7 without paying someone $800. I looked into some programs that retrieve the info and cost less than $100 but from further research it sounds like maybe something maybe wrong with the HDD, and Samsung will only replace it, not help recover data.

Thanks to any and all help!

Discussion is locked

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Getting data back
Jan 7, 2011 11:12PM PST
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This forum
Jan 8, 2011 12:59AM PST
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Last best chance
Jan 15, 2011 2:38AM PST

What I've done in the past, as a last resort, was to replace the disk controller card that is attached to the back of the hard disk drive, with an exact copy from another functioning drive (same model number and same spec). Controllers are attached by connectors and are generally NOT soldered in place.
But first, I'd try ALL the software solutions mentioned above, until I was comfortable knowing that none of them worked. Then I'd freeze the drive in the deep freeze over night and try again before the drive warmed up.
HDD controller replacement may not work for the following reasons. 1 spindle motor is toast, R/W head is toast, R/W head impacted (crashed) onto the platter. R/W preamp interface chip is toast, R/W head has stick-tion, data is corrupted.
Also be aware that you may brick the good working HDD, if your not careful (Static discharge is a bad thing). In 30 years in the enterprise computer industry, I've seen just about every failure possible, and in some case recovery is impossible. I've even seen cases of the oxide scraped off and the bare glass platter was see through.
Good luck

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Worth a shot..
Jan 22, 2011 6:31AM PST

Try a linux live cd.

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Thanks for all help
Jan 25, 2011 5:55AM PST

All this help was great. I tried many things, but after a while the noise got louder and is now completly unreadable.

At least Samsung will provide a replacement.