Death Inc

Could do with some help here. User had a laptop that they decided needed to be smashed by being stepped on in error. Laptop is fucked, however the underneath where the HDD is fine. I was asked to look at it so I pulled it out and plugged it into a hotdesk PC here to see how it is. Overall looks fine, detected fine and didnt give it much thought as its a personal drive not a work drive. Was going to give it back but was asked to pull the user profile off. Easy IMHO so I double clicked the users profile on the drive, prompted to take ownership for permissions, sure, started that and then walked away.

Come back 2 hours later and its still writing permissions (green bar across top ticking along) I check the event log and the HDD is banging on bad sectors :(

Should I stop trying to read the user profile for the data and run a chkdsk on the drive, or continue on with being halfway through accessing the drive?

I am wary of stopping halfway through in case it may make it worse (have had that happen in the past)

Any thoughts as I am leaving this go till lunch time today - 4 hours time- before I pull the plug and contemplate a chkdsk.

nevermind - pc locked up hardcore :( had to reboot and now the drive is permanently fucked. The drive cant even be used or detected.

And overall I am not too fussed as itys not mine, and I know how to back my shit up.

Mate I have just spent the last 29 days recovering, a laptop hard drive for a young lady, whom was not as wise as us, and has no backup, but has all of her photos of her late father on it.

I had to cold treat the drive to get it to spin and detect.
(ziplock bag, with silicon gel satchel, fridge 24hrs)

at times the drive would detect, then fail, then partitions, would appear and disappear.

I ended up, laptop drive in usb 3 cradle, PC on UPS (fucking power companies, but that is a different issue)

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm (https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm)
16 days later, spinrite had completed a sector checked, marked and recovered the drive.
I then cloned the faulty drive to a new, then ran chkdsk.

The laptop now boots, was able to remove the spyware and virus infections, and have one of the happiest customers

She is sending down to bne for data recovery. Paying between 700 and 2k for it. I was going to freeze it but its not a work drive. So gave up or else.

here is hoping she packs it correctly and aust post don't teach her theat 2.5" drives are made from silica, and shatter like glass, cause no amount of money can recover that shit