How to recover data from a crashed hard drive, Getting data back from Abyss!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

 

Just a few days ago my laptop hard drive crashed and  I already knew all my data is gone for ever. My laptop was making a ticking noise from last few months and I had a small feeling that this was going to happen with my laptop and finally it did happen!! . So then started the quest to find a way to recover my data from that crashed hard drive. I searched a lot on the web and found that it was possible and it can be done by simply enclosing the drive into an external hard drive case which makes hard drive to be able to connect via USB port to a PC. But this was not all because my had drive was making a strange noise when it was there in the laptop, so I was sure that its going to be a mechanical fault.

 

Operating System Not Found! error during boot time

 

As I was browsing and searching on web for a solution I came across an interesting page Lazy (Men's) Electronics: Recovering Data from Hard Drive Failure . This person was also having the same problem as I went through his page, I got an idea of that it might be the problem with my drive too. When I opened my drive I found that fault was due to head stuck on the platter of hard disk which was not moving even when the platter was rotating. This was why the hard drive was making such a strange noise and my laptop started showing an error message ‘Operating system not found’ at boot time and my laptop was dead. It was not able to boot and load Windows. So I also checked the bios to verify if my drive was being detected and what I found was no drive detected which made me worried as all my data was gone.

 

 

Buying a new Hard drive to replace the faulty drive:

 

Failed Seagate Momentus ST9250827AS 250GB 5400.4 RPM

My new Seagate Momentus ST9500420AS 500GB 7200.4 RPM

 

To bring my laptop back to life, I researched over web and found that the same Seagate Momentus 250GB 5400.4 RPM drive was costly at around $85 and slower than Seagate Momentus ST9500420AS 500GB 7200.4 RPM which was faster, so I ordered the 500GB one  for my laptop for around $72 on Amazon.ca . I also made sure that the new drive is compatible with my laptop motherboard which is an Intel PM45 Mobile chipset and found that it supports higher capacity drives. The drive came within 5 days and YES! it was compatible with my laptop and got installed successfully.

 

Now the only thing I wanted was my data. So I ordered a USB enclosure from EBay just for $4.00 and got it shipped from Hong Kong. It took around 20 Days to ship to Canada and I waited patiently for it.

 

USB 2.0 Sata Enclosure for Laptop 2.5” Hard drives.

 

Data Recovery:

 

Now after it came I started the operation Data Rescue :

 

First I loaded the drive into the USB 2.0 2.5" SATA HARD DISK DRIVE Enclosure and then plugged it into my laptop for recovery but again the same sound came and now there was only last option left for me that was to open the drive and to see if the head was stuck on the platter. Then I opened the drive which had some 7 small screws with a T7 Screwdriver .

 

Opening screws of the hard drive

 

After I opened the drive my guess was right the head was stuck on the platter and I just carefully moved it into its resting location.

 

Image showing Head stuck on platter and its resting location

 

With my fingers crossed, I put it back into the USB enclosure and son of a GUN! there’s the data!, my laptop detected the drives. So I started copying the data as soon as possible because I knew its going to be dead soon as the drive was making ticking sounds. So I waked up until 2:00 AM to recover all of my data and then I decided to turn off the computer after I was done. I was able to copy about 90-95% data from my drive, some of the data got corrupted. But luckily all my important files were intact and were copied safely to my new drive.

 

Next morning when I waked up and again tried to connect the drive to get some songs and other stuff, the drive finally gave up.

 

My Seagate Momentus ST9250827AS Head fail

 

So how much did I Save! $$

 

I found that if I wanted to get my data recovered from a professional company it was going to cost me more than $1000! and the price of new drive is not included.

 

However I got the recovery done for just $4 which is the cost my USB enclosure from Ebay .

 

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How to create 3D TEXT in Photoshop

Sunday, November 8, 2009

I recently learned a great way of making 3D text in Photoshop which i thought was IMPOSSIBLE in Photoshop. In very short time you can create a great looking 3D text which you can use for your blogs and websites.

 

For this tutorial I am using Photoshop CS3. It can also be created using Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop 7.

 

Lets start :

 

• Open Photoshop

 

• Click on New to Create a New file and choose the resolution high like 1600 x 1200px.

 

• Click OK to start creating a new image.

 

• Now Click on Text button to begin writing on the image.

 

• Now write the first alphabet you want to convert into 3D.

 

• Then right click on S layer and click on Rasterize type.
• Now with S layer selected Go to Edit>Transform>Distort . Now Distort the Alphabet from sides to give it a 3D look. 
• Right Click on S layer and select Duplicate Layer to create a Duplicate layer of S and name it as S1.

• Now with S1 layer selected go to Edit>Free Transform. Then move the S1 layer 6 to 10 pixels up and 3 to 4 pixels right or left
  

 

• Now right click on S1 layer and select Bending Options. Then select the Gradient Overlay and choose the colours that you want. Set the angle to show the light colour outside or set accordingly.

• Here is the final output TADAAAA!!!!

 

 

You can also watch the video tutorial and learn:

 

 

To download the Video Tutorial and the PSD file .. Click Here! 

 

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How to Create Web 2.0 logo in 2 Minutes! Photoshop Tutorial from SMB

Friday, July 11, 2008

Check out this video tutorial I made to help you Build a Logo for your Blog..Hope you find it useful..

 

The tutorial covers the following main things to help you build a beautiful & impressive logo :

 

• Using Gradient overlay on Text

 

• Duplicating the Text Layer afterwards.

 

• Rotating the Duplicated text layer vertically.

 

• Reversing the gradient overlay on rotated text layer.

 

• Then converting the text layer into Smart shape for further again using Gradient overlay ' Foreground to Transparent ' to give a Reflection effect.

 

• TADAAA!! your Logo is ready!!

 

 

With this method you can create a Professional looking logo in just 2 Minutes only ! ....

 

Here's the video:

 

 

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