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We have a Seagate Barracude 750GB SATA Hard-Drive that is now refusing to access the partition Windows 7 is located on. I have trouble shooted this hard-drive with both Windows Tools and Linux TestDisk Tool(with GParted). The outcome with the hard-drive hooked up using another Windows box is, its showing that the Recovery partition loads, but the Windows 7 partition does not. Drive letter for Windows partition does show but is not accessible via Windows Explorer or the command prompt. I can see the top root files within the Recovery partition but they cannot be accessed because Windows Explorer does not responds and the command prompt just sits and waits. The hard-drive finally unmounts by its self. (By error?)

I then rebooted the computer I’m using to look at the bad hard-drive into GPARTED Live CD. I’ve used the utility TESTDISK many times to recover partitions. The first thing I noticed when I ran GPARTED that a warning windows popped up for my bad hard-drive stating “Input/Output error during read on /dev/sdb”. I clicked ignore and opened the terminal and typed sudo testdisk. Found the bad hard-drive and proceeded to scan. Before I ran a quick scan I got an error stating “Read Error” . I then did a quick and deep scan and ended up not finding any partition. Most likely due to the “Read Error”.

I concluded that the hard-drive disks are spinning so there’s probably not a chance that it’s the plates or spindle inside the hard-drive. In fact I concluded it’s most likely the hard-drive controller board causing the “Read Error”. I had read that if the hard-drive controller board got really hot(which it was), it’s probably an integrated chip overheating.

Next I spent $50 to purchase the same model hard-drive controller board, thinking that this might solve the “Read Error”. When I replaced the bad hard-drive controller board with the new one and plugged everything in, I got a “click click”. I thought I had done something to damage my hard-drive. However when I replaced the bad hard-drive controller the clicking stopped and the same instance as I stated above happened.

Forms are not helping and I still have a hunch I can get the hard-drive contents off the hard-drive without defaulting to the “the hard-drive is toast” excuse. It’s not toast, just a “Read Error”, but it seems like everyone just gives up. I would really like to figure this out. Any help please?

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  • Sounds like you should use professional data recovery services at this point since you have done more than most people can do. Its likely a mechanical problem which cannot be fixed without a clean room.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 7, 2014 at 17:00

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I would try to clone the bad partition to a known good drive, and then run recovery on the good drive. Clonezilla (among other tools) can be used to clone the partition while continuing on read error. Perhaps you'll have more luck trying to read (possibly corrupted) data from an actual working drive.

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  • I'll try that but I would think that because it's a read error I'm getting, cloning would be pointless? Are you saying clone just the bad partition or the whole drive?
    – Benjamin Jones
    Commented Nov 7, 2014 at 16:48
  • Just the individual partition, unless you need data from the other partition(s) as well. However, I agree with Ramhound above. If the data is of substantial value to you, professional recovery may be your best bet, but it won't be inexpensive.
    – Psychoholic
    Commented Nov 7, 2014 at 17:07

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