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Hard Drive Crashed I Had A Question


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Posted

Hi, I had a question. My hard drive crashed yesterday and I wanted to know since i can't recover the things on it is there anyway that I can see what was on it through something cataloging it? For example spotlight? or quicksilver? To better explain what I mean, I wanted to like see exactly what folders and such are... were on the external. I know quicksilver and spotlight catalog the drive to find things faster. I wanted to see this catalog to redownload the things on it, i.e. Songs, Programs, Movies, etc, ... Thanks in advance I appreciate any help.

- Armando

Posted

It clicks when connected to the computer or turned on for that matter, and my computer tells me that it can't read or and to initialize it or something? So I wanted to know if spotlight or quicksilvers cataloging files were still on the computer. Thanks.

-Armando

Posted

Oh no sorry for the misunderstanding, Yeah I realized that my external doesn't work anymore. My question was if the catalog feature of spotlight or quicksilver would like.. be saved even though it its disconnected. What i wanted is like the list of things on my external. The software so that i can redownload it.

Posted

From experience if its clicking then the whole drive is dead, no ammount of software is going to access the disk (I belive the clicking sound is the arm) so this is hardware related.

People like OnTrak can recover the data for you, but I belive their service costs run into the $1000's - they will take appart your harddrive in a clean room and rebuild it.

On a side note has anyone ever done / tried this themselves?

Posted

You're right.

From the sound of things it is a hardware problem and only specialists with top equipment will be able to retrieve your files.

I'm afraid you won't have much of a chance on your own.

Posted

*facepalm* last two posts, kinda show that people dont read 100% of the posts. As for what i know, neither spotlight or quicksilver keep a record of the contents of the HDD thats accessible by the end user.

Posted

Oh they dont? damn alright well thanks, i'll just have to get everything i had by memory. Thanks alot guys.

-Armando

Posted

off topic:

From my experience it might work if you put the harddrive in the freezer.. (inside a plastic bag or something) for like a day..

Then connect it.. it sometimes does the trick and you have some time to get your stuff off..

(basically until it warms up again)

But only use it as a last resort and from what I've heard.. you can only do this once so better grab the good stuff first.

Posted
off topic:

From my experience it might work if you put the harddrive in the freezer.. (inside a plastic bag or something) for like a day..

Then connect it.. it sometimes does the trick and you have some time to get your stuff off..

(basically until it warms up again)

But only use it as a last resort and from what I've heard.. you can only do this once so better grab the good stuff first.

This method works very well for drives that have the "click of death". Put the drive in the freezer for at least 2 hours.You don't really need it to be in a plastic bag. Then remove it and hook it back up. Try and get it to boot. If it boots you've got 5-30 minutes of time before it dies again. You can then put it back in the freezer for another couple of hours and try again.

You want it cold but you don't want extreme cold so don't go putting it into liquid nitrogen or dry ice. You can run drive from inside the freezer if you want but you run the risk of water condensation and shorting out the board.

I've successfully used this method several times on different drives and put it back in the freezer up to 6 times, before the drive just compeletely failed.

The key is getting your data off. Don't bother with something you download later. Just get the really important stuff off first, you may not have a second chance.

As for data restoration programs I've had good luck with GetDataBack from Runtime.org, For quick and dirty there's always dd

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