Copy files from a broken HDD

[holy_secret]

Hey y'all.
I've got a new and shiny Acer Aspire S3 a few months ago. Being a clumsy fudge, I've dropped it one to many times. It started complaining that the HDD was malfunctioning and that I needed to send it to maintenance and have it fixed. I decided it would be a better idea to keep using it.

Well, now the computer is working so badly that it crashes every time I open a video file, plug anything into the USB thingies or try to update something.
The thing is that I managed to learn all the faults, so I've been just walking around them (and gotten used to it actually. I could live with this shit).

The problem is now, since it slows down immensely when I plug something in through USB, I can't make copies of my files. It only copies a couple of files until it decides to go down to 14kbps and then just dying, forcing me to restart the computer.

Does anyone have any idea what I could do to get my pictures, music and documents out of this sinking ship before it's lost forever? I want to send it for repair on monday.

 

[Supernova1138]

Unfortunately you seem to have physical damage to the hard drive. You are probably out of luck when it comes to recovering the files on your own. If you absolutely must get the data you can take the drive to a data recovery service, they might be able to recover the data if the platters aren't damaged and the reason for your problems is damage to the heads. Biggest drawback of data recovery services is that they will cost you several hundred dollars at least. This is the reason why you make backups of all your important stuff.

 

[holy_secret]

Unfortunately you seem to have physical damage to the hard drive. You are probably out of luck when it comes to recovering the files on your own. If you absolutely must get the data you can take the drive to a data recovery service, they might be able to recover the data if the platters aren't damaged and the reason for your problems is damage to the heads. Biggest drawback of data recovery services is that they will cost you several hundred dollars at least. This is the reason why you make backups of all your important stuff.

I did make a backup of my pictures long before this happened, thank grilled cheesus to that.
Now the HDD is making sounds. as if a little piece is sticking out of a spinning thing and hitting the wall or something. I can't believe this piece of scrap is still running.

Also, it is only VLC that makes it crash. Windows Media Player, for some unknown reason, works way better. Why the hell.

Oh well. I guess my Uni stuff is screwed.

Or hey! Couldn't I upload the stuff somewhere? You don't happen to know a place where you can upload like a bunch of GB of semi-useful stuff?

 

[Supernova1138]

The fact it is making noise does indicate damage. It could be that the part of the drive with VLC on it is damaged, but the part of the drive storing Windows Media player is still functioning.

As for uploading stuff, you could look at the Cloud Storage providers and see if they offer a free trial, if so you can try to upload your stuff there and download it off once you have a new drive. Other sites like Rapidshare or Filesonic might still be up and running though they are very paranoid these days due to the whole Megaupload fiasco, pray the government doesn't try to shut them down too.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Or hey! Couldn't I upload the stuff somewhere? You don't happen to know a place where you can upload like a bunch of GB of semi-useful stuff?

If the disk platter(s) are damaged enough to give constant read errors, then no, trying to upload them will result in the same issue - grinding to a halt on the damaged platter sectors.

If it was me, I'd drop the damaged HDD into a USB 2.5" HDD enclosure, hook it up to another computer and run data recovery software to see what I could salvage...

 

[Archangel768]

Dropbox gives u 2gb of free storage which is great for keeping general uni work backup.

It works by installing it than making a folder called 'drop box' which you can save all your important stuff to. It then uploads anything in that folder to your drop box account online and any computer that has dropbox and is linked to your account will automatically download any new/updated files. I use it to store all my uni work on. It's great Unless you're dealing with tons of video files or other big files.

 

[holy_secret]

Or hey! Couldn't I upload the stuff somewhere? You don't happen to know a place where you can upload like a bunch of GB of semi-useful stuff?

If the disk platter(s) are damaged enough to give constant read errors, then no, trying to upload them will result in the same issue - grinding to a halt on the damaged platter sectors.

If it was me, I'd drop the damaged HDD into a USB 2.5" HDD enclosure, hook it up to another computer and run data recovery software to see what I could salvage...

Yeah that's exactly what happened...

I can trick it though by uploading a small amount a time, but the bigger files are screwed. Everything above 100MB makes the computer freak out.

Oh well. Tomorrow it goes to the repair shop. I'll try copying the small things a bit at a time.

Thanks for your tips guys