Can you recover data from a S.M.A.R.T error HDD?

[Darkherow]

Basically I'm having a local computer engineer put together a system for me and I wanted them to reuse a hard drive for the new system but when they tested it, they found S.m.a.r.t errors on the drive, it was a seagate 1tb Barracuda. They said they will try to recover the data from it but have said chances are that all the data is gone and I won't have anything left? Is possible to recover the data in the drive after a Smart error?

I have just purchased a new seagate 3tb barracuda drive and I would like to know if it's possible to recover the data from the 1tb drive to put onto the new 3tb drive?

thanks

 

[yassarikhan786]

Yeah it still should be possible. Did they say what software they would be using to recover the data?

 

[allen]

Pretty much as long as the drive is spinning you can recover day at from it.. Best way to find a program is google top 10 data recovery software

 

[FredEx]

It can most often be recovered, but if there has been surface damage to the disk/s or head damage from contact you may be out of luck. Also shock damage can knock the heads off track enough that it is not possible to recover the data either via conventional software. In the old days yes, but the higher density drives of today with such tight tolerances, no. Then it takes a specialist in data recovery and deep pockets.

 

[Darkherow]

Thanks for the reply, I don't know what software they will be using but I would guess that it would be the seagate recovery software since they use quite alot of seagate products. I should get my new HDD tomorrow and when I take it to them, I'll ask what software.

I also want to note that before I took the computer to them the hard drive was working with my old motherboard and it didn't seem to have a problem.

Hopefully it's still spinning and there should be any contact with surface. The only thing I can think of is I took the computer to them in the car and I had to lay the computer on it's side.

I will find out more info hopefully tomorrow.

 

[Darkherow]

An update and some questions...

Well my new system has been put together and has the following specs-

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Intel Core i7 3820, S 2011, Sandy Bridge-E Processor[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Asus Sabertooth x79 Motherboard [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]1GB Quadro 600 Graphics Card [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]16GB 4x4GB Corsair Jet Black 1600mhz RAM[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]NZXT Havik 120 CPU Cooler[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]NZXT Hale82 850M 850Watts Power Supply [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Noctua NF-F12 PWM 120mm Case Fan [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Already in Case[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]1 TB Hard Drive Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA 3Gb/s[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]500GB Hard Drive Samsung HD501LJ 7200 RPM SATA 3G/bs[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]DVD Optical Drive[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Additional[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]250GB Hard Drive (From old computer, C drive)[/FONT]

The original system used the 500gb as the boot drive but in the new build it is a slave with the 250gb wiped clean and formatted as the boot, and 1TB is still installed as a slave I believe. As I have said before the 1TB has smart errors but with the new board in the BIOs, the technician was able to turn off the smart functions and I can access the drive. I have already bought the 3TB Seagate Barracuda and they tried to install it but due to my OS being Windows XP Pro x64, it can't see the drive because there's a 2TB capacity limit in XP. I have found on the Seagate website that if I partition the drive with their Discwizard I should get at least a 2TB drive with a partition of the remaining space. I would like to know it this will work? Has anyone done this and is it worth doing? Will there be any read write problems? The aim is to clone or transfer the 1TB data onto the 3TB drive.

A separate issue, sorry for my ignorance, as I haven't done too much of this before and I hope people don't find this a silly question. Now that the boot is the 250gb but all my software is still on the 500gb, do I have to reinstall everything? Also there's alot of registry, Windows and program directories, should I delete these? since the boot is the 250gb and 500gb windows was only working with the old components. How best should I remove theese files if I was to remove them?

 

[hmmblah]

Sorry to get critical, but why an X79 system running XP and no SSD? Is this PC built for a specific purpose?

 

[Darkherow]

Ran out of money to get a SSD, plus XP has difficulty using TRIM in SSDs.

The system is built to use Maya. However the version of Autodesk Maya I currently have is Maya 2008(can't get a newer version and I want to carry on using a legit copy). I'm worried if upgrading to windows 7, that there'll be problems running it, as some suggest it's not compatible with the new OS. I still have this option open to me if it can run with windows 7.

I'll still need the large space an HDD has for my rendering.

Hope this clears things up and any advice welcome.

thanks