cgsecurity.org

Hello!

My Toshiba 320 GB hard drive recently died, like really dead. It was in the laptop, working fine one minute and then, after a restart, refused to boot at all, not even into safe mode. I tried many things but nothing worked. Every time I tried to access the drive, I got "E: is not accessible; the parameter is incorrect." I think the hard drive itself is physically damaged, but I can't be sure.

I took out the hard drive, put it in a case and have plugged it into another computer. I tried using TestDisk and it can see the drive and it accurately assesses the size, but it cannot read the disc nor can it see any partitions. I did a regular scan and a deep scan and it just said "Read Error" the entire time. I tried rewriting the boot sector, and it said it couldn't do that. Disc Manager says it is a healthy partition, though it is listed as RAW.

Also, strangely enough, I can't post the log file here as it's about 350 GB. (I have no idea why.) Any help you could give would be great - I've got a lot of family photos I'd like to get back.

Thanks in advance!

Is your disk protected by toshiba encryption ? If yes, you have to let the disk in the computer, and boot from another OS, like a linux liveCD. Then launch testdisk from this liveCD and see if there's always read error. You don't need to do a full scan. We will also have more tools to diagnose the status of your disk.

Your log is 350GB because in each sector there's a read error.

Can you hear your disk clicking ?

I don't believe it's protected by any encryption. At least, I've never seen any indication that it is. I tried booting from a Linux startup disk and it didn't work either - couldn't get past the initial "boot from USB" screen.

The disc was clicking at one point but is now sounding normal, although I haven't done anything with it in a few days.

These signs (impossible to boot, clicking noises) are relevant of a hardware failure. In my opinion, you shoul contact a professionnal datarecovey service in your area. Where are you from ?

EDIT : for cross-testing purpose, try to boot your computer with the linux disk only, removing completely your hard drive, thus checking if it's the hard disk that provide you from booting.