Recovering data from failed drive

Kalev

Hi,
I am looking for different methods of attempting to recover data from a failed drive.
The failure is hardware, as there is a high pitched clicking sound every minute or so and under normal circumstances the disk will not be recognized.

I have put the drive in the freezer for ~ 3hours and connected afterwards. The clicking does go away but the copying data to new disk is very very slow and fails half way through (15mins into copy)

I have a spare drive to copy data too.

Is there any app out there that would be recommended for a case like this?
I was curious abou the possiblity of using something like ghost?
Is the following even possible?:
Boot ghost and create copy/image from the bad drive to the good drive.
Then begin to use some type of recovery software to salvage as much as I can from the image?

Any other ideas?
(Unfortunately, the failed drive is the backup drive!!! :mad:)
Model is a 500Gb Seagate barracuda 7200 - with about 200Gbs max that would be nice to recover

gamer

COPY folders from hd 1 to hd2 one by one,pick one folder 200meg can it copy that without failing,copy the most important data 1st.test a few copied files ,mp3s or avi s do the load in vlc video player.CAN IT copy100megfiles without fail.LEAVE the pc on,when you knock it off old hd prbly wont load.
if you use ghost it,ll just try and copy the whole hd ,all files and will prbly fail.IF you look on revision3.com/ show Tekzilla about 3weeks,ago,theres a show reviews free backup, hd dup programs.THEY are also on veoh com/ youtube
search revv3 Tekzilla backup.
IF THE files are just 100 meg you could try copying 4 at a time.
OR leave hd with specialist hd data recovery firm if the data is financially valuable.
SEE here http://revision3.com/tekzilla/windows7/free-software-macrium-reflect-free-backup-software

Kalev

Thanks for the reply.
It's all just personal stuff (photos and music). I'm trying to copy stuff I know never made it onto dvd backup as well.

It seems that freezing it is working just enough to small chunks at a time.

Was curious how long it might take ghost to copy a full image ~ 200GB of data on a 500Gb drive?
Thinking if I freeze this thing for about 24hours, it might stay cold long enough to perform an image.

gamer

ON my pc to copy to usb 500gig iomega 700meg takes around 4mins ,but if you have to copy each folder,or larger file 200meg one by one it could take over ten hours .My advice leave the pc on ,external drive on for 2 days,until you have the files copied.Cos the mostly likely thing is when you start up,knock off hd,switch on thats when it will die,eg it may not spin up.IF YOU keep it at a constant tempeture its more likely to work, when you knock em off drives get cold,and the hd drive heads move to parking position.

gamer

I,LL post back here in about 60mins ,have a look at www.seagate.com ,i think they have free programs 2download to test the drive,or misc hardrive utilitys and advice tech info 4 seagate hds.

gamer

See here http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml#folders
try freebyte copys folders or directorys ie theres no need to copy the whole hd,copy the most important folders first .Probably photos.TRY copying some files from dos prompt ,is it faster ,use copy *.doc command for example ,if you are used to using dos commands.

Kalev

Thanks for all the replies.
Hard drive left overnight in freezer and will try another attempt later on today.