Hard drive dead?

Hi @moo @Elder Geek @heynnema (anybody else welcome), I posted a question in the chat

Neither fdisk -l nor testdisk show this Seagate drive, although gnome-disk-utility shows it saying "No media". This is a friend's Windows (7 ?).

ls /dev/disk/by-id/*  (my own usual uuids replaced by ... below)    
...        ...          wwn-0x5000c5001ef815d2
...  ata-ST3750528AS_6VP2NFKJ    wwn-0x5000cca37ce23cbb
...  ...  wwn-0x5000cca37ce23cbb-part1
...  ...      wwn-0x5000cca37ce23cbb-part2
...  ...         wwn-0x5000cca37ce23cbb-part3
...                   ...  wwn-0x5000cca37ce23cbb-part4
...             wwn-0x50000f001b110412
...                wwn-0x50000f001b110412-part1

.

ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/
09ecdff0-44fe-437e-8063-deabc6feb00e
7323407c-7d0b-4acd-8299-c8f3787111ff
a434a28e-a4b9-4db0-b40e-b93010ed6ceb
66392631-7c4f-4773-8614-4c5ea0913890
7b9d93fc-6898-4085-8117-7f1c76fd8a28
e80baa09-5e4b-4c29-9d0b-bc265f8384f4

.

cat /etc/fstab
UUID=09ecdff0-44fe-437e-8063-deabc6feb00e /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
UUID=e80baa09-5e4b-4c29-9d0b-bc265f8384f4 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
UUID=7323407c-7d0b-4acd-8299-c8f3787111ff /srv            ext4    defaults        0       2
UUID=7b9d93fc-6898-4085-8117-7f1c76fd8a28 /tmp            ext4    defaults        0       2
UUID=a434a28e-a4b9-4db0-b40e-b93010ed6ceb /var            ext4    defaults        0       2
UUID=66392631-7c4f-4773-8614-4c5ea0913890 none            swap    sw              0       0

.

smartctl -a /dev/sdc
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [x86_64-linux-3.13.0-110-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Smartctl open device: /dev/sdc failed: Permission denied
~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc
[sudo] password for me: 
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [x86_64-linux-3.13.0-110-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
Device Model:     ST3750528AS
Serial Number:    6VP2NFKJ
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 01ef815d2
Firmware Version: CC44
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Sat Mar  4 17:52:16 2017 CET
==> WARNING: A firmware update for this drive may be available,
see the following Seagate web pages:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207931en
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/213891en
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Read SMART Data failed: scsi error aborted command
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: UNKNOWN!
SMART Status, Attributes and Thresholds cannot be read.
Read SMART Log Directory failed: scsi error aborted command
Read SMART Error Log failed: scsi error aborted command
Read SMART Self-test Log failed: scsi error aborted command
Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

.

[ 2483.391005] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 2483.391014] ata5.00: irq_stat 0x40000001
[ 2483.391019] ata5.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE
[ 2483.391029] ata5.00: cmd e7/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 19
[ 2483.391029]          res 51/04:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x1 (device error)
[ 2483.391034] ata5.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 2483.391038] ata5.00: error: { ABRT }
[ 2483.424566] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133 (device error ignored)
[ 2483.424578] ata5.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0
[ 2483.424619] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
[ 2483.424659] ata5: EH complete

EDIT : more info as moo asked (although smart was already in initial post, I repost and added error code return) :

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc
~$ echo $?
0

.

~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [x86_64-linux-3.13.0-112-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
Device Model:     ST3750528AS
Serial Number:    6VP2NFKJ
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 01ef815d2
Firmware Version: CC44
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Thu Mar  9 10:55:14 2017 CET

==> WARNING: A firmware update for this drive may be available,
see the following Seagate web pages:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207931en
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/213891en

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Read SMART Data failed: scsi error aborted command

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: UNKNOWN!
SMART Status, Attributes and Thresholds cannot be read.

Read SMART Log Directory failed: scsi error aborted command

Read SMART Error Log failed: scsi error aborted command

Read SMART Self-test Log failed: scsi error aborted command

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

~$ echo $?
4

. [EDIT] I gave up and gave the drive back to my friend. Resetting the MaxLBA field with SeaChest_Configure -d /dev/sg2 --setMaxLBA 1481663420 failed. Maybe I could have had success help with resetting the smart partition on the drive with a serial connection, but I had no serial adapter at the moment, I was fed up, and some sites say this way works only with 7000.11 drives (doesn't work for 7200.12). Thanks for help although. Bye bye.

Solution 1:

Note: You need to provide more information for anyone to be able to help you more!

Assumptions:

• You are recovering data from a HDD which has a Windows 7 OS installed on it i.e. likely has NTFS partitions on it.

• You are attempting to recover this data on your Ubuntu System

Other information you could provide:

• Assuming the hard drive in question is /dev/sdc try to update your question with the output from the following commands (you did not use sudo when you ran your commands!):

  sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc
  sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc
  sudo parted /dev/sdc print
  sudo dd if=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=2 | xxd
  

• A Screen-shot of the partition layout got using Gparted would be useful for diagnosis. On ubuntu I believe you can install gparted using:

  sudo apt-get install gparted
  

• Additional information you can provide on the sound the Hard drive is making would be useful in diagnosis: Disk spin up, Disk activity when using dd to read from the disk, repetitive clicking sounds from the Hard drive.

Recommendations:

• Image the HDD first using ddrecue (ddrescue man page) or dd. Depending on what is wrong with the HDD the more time you spend with it powered on the more likely you risk losing all data. Ideally you want to focus on imaging it and then working on the recovery directly on the image of the HDD. This is especially true for mechanically damaged HDD. You can install ddrescue on ubuntu with:

  sudo apt-get install gddrescue
  

• If you must try recovery without creating an image then first try to mount partitions on the HDD as read-only

  mkdir /tmp/mnt1 /tmp/mnt2
  sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdc1 /tmp/mnt1
  sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdc2 /tmp/mnt2
  

• Try to use disk recovery tools like Testdisk

  sudo testdisk /dev/sdc
  

• If you believe it is a firmware issue try updating your drive with the firmware available for your drive at: http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/213891en. You can use either the ISO or the Windows executable to update your firmware (also see the instructions on the same page).

Notes:

• fdisk only reads your partition table located at the beginning of your drive (within the first 512 bytes). If it doesn't return any information it means your partition table is not readable (either because it has been wiped clean or because it is not readable because of a hardware problem)

• ddrecue and dd do almost the same thing. They read block by block from the disk. ddrescue is useful for recovery as it can be controlled more then dd. For example you can tailor which areas on the disk you want to recover first and ignore bad areas which cause your hard drive to lock up.

• Always connect the HDD directly using SATA connector to your motherboard. Don't use a USB to Sata Adapter to connect your HDD via USB.

Solution 2:

This is going to sound very strange, and I'll probably get a few down votes (please don't) for this, but I'm an old timer that's been around for a while, and I'll tell you about a few little tricks that we used to try in the old days, and it DID save some data for us...

If the read/write heads are stuck to the platters, the drive won't even spin up (which could also be a bad drive motor). Take the bare drive and quickly rotate the drive around the drive motor axis. It's got to be a snap rotate to break the "sticktion" if that's what's occurring. Retry the drive.

Another thing that you can try...

Take the bare drive in put it into the freezer, yes, the freezer. Enclose it in a zip lock bag to keep the moisture out. Purge excess air from the bag. The freezer trick is for a host of other failure modes, to include bad solder joints, bad circuit etches, chips that fail as soon as they reach temperature, bearings in motors and data head actuators, etc.

Try 10-15 minutes first. After that, remove it from the freezer and immediately reconnect the drive to your computer and see if you can recover data using any of the methods available to you, including the ones described in the other answers.

Let us know if it worked for you.