Seizure1990 Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 I have tried looking around, but no luck. I know about utilities like HDAT, but HDD Regenerator has the ability to run from inside Windows, rather then off a boot medium, which would make my life so much easier. Does anybody know of something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 ToneKnee Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 I have tried looking around, but no luck. I know about utilities like HDAT, but HDD Regenerator has the ability to run from inside Windows, rather then off a boot medium, which would make my life so much easier. Does anybody know of something? Sorry, but HDD Regenerator cannot repair physical damage to a hard drive. If you are looking for a good file recovery tool, try Recuva, Avoid applications that say they can claim lost data from physically damaged bad sectors, they can try to recover data but most likely won't work, usually requires specialists to do it for you. Also, I'm not sure if your aware, but a few years ago hard drive manufacturers started putting extra space on hard drive platters incase of a bad sector occuring. Usually the hard drive will automatically transfer the data out of the bad one, and into a fresh new one then report that it's seen a bad sector via SMART. These applications like HDD Regenerator are just programs that people use to get money from people. Data in bad sectors can sometimes be recovered, but normal free applications like Recuva will have a good chance by itself to do it for you, if not then your pretty much out of look and a specialist can take a go at it but that's a lot of money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Seizure1990 Posted April 22, 2011 Author Share Posted April 22, 2011 Sorry, but HDD Regenerator cannot repair physical damage to a hard drive. If you are looking for a good file recovery tool, try Recuva, Avoid applications that say they can claim lost data from physically damaged bad sectors, they can try to recover data but most likely won't work, usually requires specialists to do it for you. This is positively wrong. I've repaired many hard drives with bad sectors, and there have been many occasions where doing so rendered an unbootable OS workable. So clearly, it's possible to repair bad sectors. Also, I'm not sure if your aware, but a few years ago hard drive manufacturers started putting extra space on hard drive platters incase of a bad sector occuring. Usually the hard drive will automatically transfer the data out of the bad one, and into a fresh new one then report that it's seen a bad sector via SMART. I am aware. What is your point? I need a program to repair the original sectors. You say "usually" and that is they key word there - usually. Not all errors are automatically recovered. These applications like HDD Regenerator are just programs that people use to get money from people. Data in bad sectors can sometimes be recovered, but normal free applications like Recuva will have a good chance by itself to do it for you, if not then your pretty much out of look and a specialist can take a go at it but that's a lot of money. I'm not looking to recover data. I'm looking to repair bad HDD sectors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sc302 Veteran Posted April 22, 2011 Veteran Share Posted April 22, 2011 Sorry, but HDD Regenerator cannot repair physical damage to a hard drive. If you are looking for a good file recovery tool, try Recuva, Avoid applications that say they can claim lost data from physically damaged bad sectors, they can try to recover data but most likely won't work, usually requires specialists to do it for you. Also, I'm not sure if your aware, but a few years ago hard drive manufacturers started putting extra space on hard drive platters incase of a bad sector occuring. Usually the hard drive will automatically transfer the data out of the bad one, and into a fresh new one then report that it's seen a bad sector via SMART. These applications like HDD Regenerator are just programs that people use to get money from people. Data in bad sectors can sometimes be recovered, but normal free applications like Recuva will have a good chance by itself to do it for you, if not then your pretty much out of look and a specialist can take a go at it but that's a lot of money. Free applications like recuva can not find everything, sometimes they find nothing at all and make you think the drive is toast. If it is not clicking and you have not wiped your drive and there is no physical damage to the drive itself, there are alternatives that you can try to see if you can get data off other than the free utilities. I have had little luck with free utilities, tbh. Many of the free utilities would only see files that weren't deleted, some saw files that were deleted but only ones that have been deleted recently. There are low cost solutions that work much better than expensive solutions...I had a customer go to staples to have them try to recover data, they told him it was doa. They told him that they tried a software recovery and also told him that they tried putting it in a "$1500 device" and couldn't read any data on it. I asked if I could have a crack on it, told him I wouldn't charge and asked if it was clicking. He said no to the clicking but he had little hope for anything being that staples with their big bad pos crap that they used couldn't get data. With my $20 2.5" HDD to usb apparatus and my $50 recovermyfiles software, I was able to recover all of his data and then he bowed down to me. He then returned to Staples and conversation with the manager to get his money back, according to him they accused me of having pirated high end software that was illegally obtained. Don't believe that just because one or two pieces of anything can recover. Free isn't always the answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 ToneKnee Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 This is positively wrong. I've repaired many hard drives with bad sectors, and there have been many occasions where doing so rendered an unbootable OS workable. So clearly, it's possible to repair bad sectors. I am aware. What is your point? I need a program to repair the original sectors. You say "usually" and that is they key word there - usually. Not all errors are automatically recovered. I'm not looking to recover data. I'm looking to repair bad HDD sectors. But that's the thing, you _cannot_ repair a bad sector, because it's physically not possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Tomoko Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 But that's the thing, you _cannot_ repair a bad sector, because it's physically not possible. Bad sectors are not always caused by physical damage to the platter. There are also logical bad sectors (soft errors) which in fact are easily repaired by disk utilities. Ideally a drive is supposed to automatically reassign bad sectors but this is seldom the case, and you usually need to repair them from a boot utility as Windows tends to throw fits if it encounters any disk problems. It's true however that physical bad sectors cannot be repaired. If all goes well they are marked as bad and reassigned to spare sectors on the drive, but once physical damage has occurred it often spreads to adjacent sectors (or all over the drive if there is debris from a head crash). In these cases the drive should obviously be replaced. Skyfrog 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 ToneKnee Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 Free applications like recuva can not find everything, sometimes they find nothing at all and make you think the drive is toast. If it is not clicking and you have not wiped your drive and there is no physical damage to the drive itself, there are alternatives that you can try to see if you can get data off other than the free utilities. I have had little luck with free utilities, tbh. Many of the free utilities would see files that weren't deleted, some saw files that were deleted but only ones that have been deleted recently. There are low cost solutions that work much better than paid for solutions...I had a customer go to staples to have them try to recover data, they told him it was doa. They told him that they tried a software recovery and also told him that they tried putting it in a "$1500 device" and couldn't read any data on it. I asked if I could have a crack on it, told him I wouldn't charge and asked if it was clicking. He said no to the clicking and he had little hope for anything being that staples with their big bad pos crap that they used couldn't get data. With my $20 2.5" HDD to usb apparatus and my $50 recovermyfiles software I was able to recover all of his data and he bowed down to me and had a conversation at staples to get his money back, according to him they accused me of having pirated high end software that was illegally obtained. Don't believe that just because one or two pieces of anything can recover. Free isn't always the answer. Yet you completely missed what program he is trying to get. The program he wants an alternative for apparently can repair physically damaged bad sectors, which we both know, is not possible. I misunderstood what he wanted because I thought he wanted to recover data and in a lot of occasions (at least with my experience), Recuva has done a good job, but then again, I've never had to deal with cater-strophic failures like you've done. I'm not arguing that there will be paid software that can do the job, but a lot of programs are bull****. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 carmatic Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 repairing physical damage on the hard disk using software simply doesnt make any sense... there is nothing inside the hard disk which should do anything but interact with the platters magnetically, and if anything touches the platters they will scratch the magnetic surface off .... and there would be nothing left to interact with Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 ToneKnee Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 Bad sectors are not always caused by physical damage to the platter. There are also logical bad sectors (soft errors) which in fact are easily repaired by disk utilities. Ideally a drive is supposed to automatically reassign bad sectors but this is seldom the case, and you usually need to repair them from a boot utility as Windows tends to throw fits if it encounters any disk problems. It's true however that physical bad sectors cannot be repaired. If all goes well they are marked as bad and reassigned to spare sectors on the drive, but once physical damage has occurred it often spreads to adjacent sectors (or all over the drive if there is debris from a head crash). In these cases the drive should obviously be replaced. I understand that, it's just when I read what the program details were, this was it's summary: "HDD Regenerator is a unique program for regeneration of physically damaged hard disk drives. It does not hide bad sectors, it really restores them!" Which is of course, bull****, this is the problems I have with programs like this, they advertise mis-leading crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Tomoko Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 I understand that, it's just when I read what the program details were, this was it's summary: "HDD Regenerator is a unique program for regeneration of physically damaged hard disk drives. It does not hide bad sectors, it really restores them!" Which is of course, bull****, this is the problems I have with programs like this, they advertise mis-leading crap. Yes I agree about that, it's very misleading. I'm not really familiar with HDD Regenerator but judging from that I'd probably avoid it. Back to the original question what I normally use is the diagnostic programs from the drive manufacturer themselves (Seagate Seatools, WD Lifeguard Diagnostics, etc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Seizure1990 Posted April 22, 2011 Author Share Posted April 22, 2011 FFS, I don't want to get into an argument about whether or not this is possible, nor do I want to nitpick their wording. Physical, not physical, either way, when a sector on the hard drive becomes unreadable, possibly because that sector of the disk has lost it's magnetization, you need a special tool to re-magnetize the disk. I just wanted to know if there were any programs that did this, for free, but within the Windows environment, like HDD Regenerator. Back to the original question what I normally use is the diagnostic programs from the drive manufacturer themselves (Seagate Seatools, WD Lifeguard Diagnostics, etc). Thank you, but I deal with a large volume of varied drives, and some of them very old which have yet their own separate version. I was hoping for a universal tool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Tomoko Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 It depends on the reason why the sector can't be read. If the platter has been physically damaged by a head crash or defect, that cannot be repaired. Disk utilities will repeatedly attempt to read from the sector and save the data, and then mark it as bad and map it to a new spare sector on the hard drive. The OS will from then on ignore the bad sector. To the user it may appear that the bad sector has been repaired, but in reality it was only replaced. If the sector is not physically damaged but just unable to be read due to a formatting problem, write error, or some other form of corruption then any disk utility such as CHKDSK should be able to repair the problem. Here is a link to Ultimate Boot CD, a bootable disc full of diagnostic and utility programs including both generic hard drive diagnostic programs and those from most hard drive manufacturers. For Windows though CHKDSK should work fine. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 xendrome Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Alternative to any HDD recovery program = Backups. deactivated_, Tomoko and Ambroos 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Unix2 Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 If you have a WD and is under two years old, you can send it back and they will send you a new one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Seizure1990 Posted April 23, 2011 Author Share Posted April 23, 2011 I honestly can't believe this.... I know about ChkDsk, i know about warranties, I know how a HDD works, and what causes read errors, and which kinds can be fixed, and which can't. I specifically decided to NOT explain for what purposes I needed this tool, because I didn't want to discuss it - I know what I need it for, and I know I need it. I don't want people to suggest I do backups - I do. Nor do I want suggestions to use CHKDSK. I do, and it can't fix all errors. Nor do I want to discuss the differences between a physically damaged drive, and an otherwise damaged drive. None of these things help me, mostly because all of you are making assumptions as to what I am trying to accomplish, and so far, none of you seem to be on the mark as to what it is for, so stop trying to guess. I'm very sorry if I appear to be rude, but I asked a question, and that is the one I would like answered. Are there any free tools that can repair bad disk sectors, like HDD Regenerator (which DOES work, along with HDAT2), and can do it from within the Windows OS? And if there aren't any, then that is the answer. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sc302 Veteran Posted April 23, 2011 Veteran Share Posted April 23, 2011 there are none that can do it with the host windows os running. possibly spinrite could help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 +Warwagon MVC Posted April 23, 2011 MVC Share Posted April 23, 2011 I recommend spin rite. It has worked wonders on a bunch of drives getting them good enough where I was then able to clone them onto a working drive, I've tried hard drive regenerator. I don't like how that works, it's very cude, i swear all that program does Is forcably relocate sectors. I swear that program does more harm than good. My vote goes to spinrite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Seizure1990 Posted April 23, 2011 Author Share Posted April 23, 2011 If they do, then really are grossly mis-advertising their product, but I know for a fact it can at least be done from bootable media (HDAT2 for instance), and HDD Regenerator at least claims to be able to do this, as well as from inside Windows. When I tried the trial, anyways, it appeared to work. It seems to open some virtualized DOS environment. Perhaps there is a way to virtualize DOS for HDAT2, while still giving it access to all connected resources? Trying to run it from CMD just yields a warning dialog saying that pure DOS mode is required. I hear about SpinRite a lot, but isn't it not free? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sc302 Veteran Posted April 23, 2011 Veteran Share Posted April 23, 2011 It isn't free but I don't believe it is expensive either. Sometimes a program that costs something is worth investing some money into. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Karl L. Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Have you considered using QEMU, or possibly some other virtualization software that can provide hardware-level access, to run HDAT2 from within your host OS? Since HDAT2 is proved as a bootable floppy disk image, this should be fairly easy. Assumptions: 1. You are running a Linux OS, such as Ubuntu (I assume that this can be done on Windows and other OS's, but I'm not exactly sure.) 2. The HDAT2 floppy disk image (HDAT2ALL.IMG) is in the current directory. 3. Your target hard drive is connected as /dev/sdb (use parted -l or fdisk -l to confirm this). 4. QEMU and all necessary utilities are installed and in path. Procedure: sudo umount /dev/sdb? sudo qemu -fda HDAT2ALL.IMG -hda /dev/sdb -m 128M -boot a I won't comment on the legitimacy of programs such as HDAT2 and HDD Regenerator, but I can confirm that my procedure works using Ubuntu 10.10 as the host OS, QEMU 0.12.5, and the HDAT2 4.8.1 floppy disk image. HDAT2 appears to operate as intended, although I am not very familiar with the program so I didn't test it much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Seizure1990 Posted April 24, 2011 Author Share Posted April 24, 2011 It isn't free but I don't believe it is expensive either. Sometimes a program that costs something is worth investing some money into. I understand that, but this is work related, and I am not about to buy software at any price just for work. If I asked my boss to buy a license, he'd probably just tell me to pirate it (and by probably, I mean, I am 100% certain that's what he will say). So, it's either free, or I continue to use HDAT2. Have you considered using QEMU, or possibly some other virtualization software that can provide hardware-level access, to run HDAT2 from within your host OS? Since HDAT2 is proved as a bootable floppy disk image, this should be fairly easy. Assumptions: 1. You are running a Linux OS, such as Ubuntu (I assume that this can be done on Windows and other OS's, but I'm not exactly sure.) 2. The HDAT2 floppy disk image (HDAT2ALL.IMG) is in the current directory. 3. Your target hard drive is connected as /dev/sdb (use parted -l or fdisk -l to confirm this). 4. QEMU and all necessary utilities are installed and in path. Procedure: sudo umount /dev/sdb? sudo qemu -fda HDAT2ALL.IMG -hda /dev/sdb -m 128M -boot a I won't comment on the legitimacy of programs such as HDAT2 and HDD Regenerator, but I can confirm that my procedure works using Ubuntu 10.10 as the host OS, QEMU 0.12.5, and the HDAT2 4.8.1 floppy disk image. HDAT2 appears to operate as intended, although I am not very familiar with the program so I didn't test it much. Virtualization? Like VirtualBox? Or is QEMU a special kind that gives direct hardware access? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 sc302 Veteran Posted April 24, 2011 Veteran Share Posted April 24, 2011 I think it is worth it if it allows you to be able to do your job. But to each their own. I worked with a company that pirated everything and a company that wants to be 100% legal. I have purchased software, if it is under $100, on my own for the benefit to just be able to do my job properly. The software also leaves with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 soldier1st Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 I honestly can't believe this.... I know about ChkDsk, i know about warranties, I know how a HDD works, and what causes read errors, and which kinds can be fixed, and which can't. I specifically decided to NOT explain for what purposes I needed this tool, because I didn't want to discuss it - I know what I need it for, and I know I need it. I don't want people to suggest I do backups - I do. Nor do I want suggestions to use CHKDSK. I do, and it can't fix all errors. Nor do I want to discuss the differences between a physically damaged drive, and an otherwise damaged drive. None of these things help me, mostly because all of you are making assumptions as to what I am trying to accomplish, and so far, none of you seem to be on the mark as to what it is for, so stop trying to guess. I'm very sorry if I appear to be rude, but I asked a question, and that is the one I would like answered. Are there any free tools that can repair bad disk sectors, like HDD Regenerator (which DOES work, along with HDAT2), and can do it from within the Windows OS? And if there aren't any, then that is the answer. Thank you. As far as i am aware, there are no free tools available, which could work in the Windows environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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Seizure1990
I have tried looking around, but no luck. I know about utilities like HDAT, but HDD Regenerator has the ability to run from inside Windows, rather then off a boot medium, which would make my life so much easier.
Does anybody know of something?
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