Bitcoin Forum

Heya

I am wondering if someone can help me with my hdd, Its 500gb from the PC im selling here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1700853
It has a bitcoin core wallet on I was using temporary until I moved and sold the BTC. ~1.22xxxxxx I hadnt encrypted it or backed up as this was a temporary measure until I was back in the country to sell.

I am not getting any response from it apart from a sound on power up. So there is power, I have tried 3 different sata cables, 2 different sata ports on main PC and one port on media center pc. nothing can recognise it. This is not just in windows but BIOS also. I really don't want to send this to a hdd recovery person as I don't have the time and don't really trust them if they fix it and see a bitcoin wallet unencrypted. I would like to get this working by myself.

Please if anyone can help :-[

It is unlikely you can repair a hdd by yourself. Sometimes hitting it once helps, some people freeze the disk (air tight).
Recovery can be very expensive.

This seems like it may only be an electronics problem though rather than a problem with the plates. maybe a board of the same type of hdd can fix this? Samsung Disk

For that amount of Bitcoin, you can always use a professional data recovery service.
Even temporary wallets should be backed up, anything can happen as you must have learned.

Wait, you can't access BIOS? Im sniffing a motherboard problem, which may have damaged your hard drive through one of the data Power cables.

There are two cables coming out of the hard drive, the data Power and the sata 8-pin. Try swapping the power, because that's probably why it isn't spinning.

If the disk itself was dead, the hard drive would still spin but all the info would be corrupted. You could try taking out the disk and giving it to a memory recovery service, unless you can read the disk yourself.

If you do Start->Run->diskmgmt.msc, does the HDD show up?

I remember having a new PC build that would not detect my HDD due to some offhand BIOS change. Worth a shot to look here to see if the HDD is throwing some error that Windows can detect but is not showing you.

This is possible because i do experience the same thing too on which windows does detect my HDD but it wont show or show some error and i search through google on what would be the possible problem and its related to BIOS issues. If this problem still occur then it might be a hardware problem.

I think this is a hardware issue, it has been working until yesterday. Its not picked up by anything.

If I'm reading this right, you have tried reading the hard drive on two different PCs?
If both are not reading it correctly there may be an issue with the drive.

I've had success a couple times using the Linux 'dd' utility to copy a disk that wasn't read by Windows.
You will need a second hard drive that is the same size or larger for the copy, and a Linux box or live CD.
You can run a dd command-
dd if=/dev/old_disk of=/dev/new_disk conv=noerror,sync
"conv=noerror,sync is used for disks with bad blocks, where the intent is to replace bad blocks with zero placeholders and continue copying."

There is also a utility called 'ddrescue' that has been made specifically to recover damaged hard drives.
https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-save-recover-data-from-crashed-disks-with-dd-and-ddrescue-command.html

Keep in mind that this is not going to work if the drive heads or board are failing physically.
If the board is going bad you have the option to find an second drive of the exact same model and swap the circuit boards.
If the drive heads are stuck or dragging your only option is to send it to a data recovery specialist. (Usually about $700+ dollars depending on the service.)
If you hear any kind of grinding noise when the disk spins up, turn it of immediately or you risk ruining the platters inside completely.

If the board is going bad you have the option to find an second drive of the exact same model and swap the circuit boards.

I think this is the issue Thanks

As drewxward quite rightly said, source an exact same working model drive (ebay / amazon) and change the PCB (the circuit board underneath) do this carefully using a small torx screwdriver..  :)

Other than HD recovery service, this is your only chance.

I've tried this 3 or 4 times in my career with hundreds of dead drives.  It's never, ever worked for me for data recovery.

Good luck.



http://73.gs/u/7r7FV.jpg

I've been doing data recovery for 15 years. This is a hardware issue, and as they say, probably the board. My "last resort" on a situation like this is an app called "Photorec" for Linux (I use Ubuntu 16.04LTS). It basically brute forces its way into the file structure...if it can access it at all. It's very slow, but works so long as the hardware still works. If that didn't do it, then I'd be looking at sending it to a clean room on the Mainland (I'm in HI). You'd be looking at around $1K for a reputable, decent recovery in a situation like that. No fun.