Hard Drive is "dead" --- What to do???

  • Thread starter Thread starter Will Mercer
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Will Mercer

I had my pc doing some avi-to-mpeg2 encoding and had a power outage in
the middle of the process. Now my dv-editing drive has gone away (no
matter which ide channel I put it on, no matter the spot on the chain,
no matter which power feed I use)--- WinXP doesn't "see" that the
drive is there. Bios when booting up doesn't see it.

I suppose the drive is dead. I can't believe it, because it had some
really important avi's on it and due to the size of the files, I
hadn't been able to back them up.

Is there any way of bringing this drive back from the dead? It is a
160GB Maxtor 7200 8MB drive, by the way.
 
Will Mercer said:
I had my pc doing some avi-to-mpeg2 encoding and had a power outage in
the middle of the process. Now my dv-editing drive has gone away (no
matter which ide channel I put it on, no matter the spot on the chain,
no matter which power feed I use)--- WinXP doesn't "see" that the
drive is there. Bios when booting up doesn't see it.

I suppose the drive is dead. I can't believe it, because it had some
really important avi's on it and due to the size of the files, I
hadn't been able to back them up.

Is there any way of bringing this drive back from the dead? It is a
160GB Maxtor 7200 8MB drive, by the way.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that. That's ashame such a top-end drive conking out.

I'll type this and you can laugh all you want, but I have read a few times
now that putting a hard-drive in your freezer for 10-15 minutes then trying
to hook it up and accessing it, *may* work. I suspect that is for
mechanical type problems, rather than electrical problems. Your drive is
probably fried electronically.

Other than sitting your drive next to the box of frozen fish, you could try
a data recovery company. Most of them charge a fortune for recovering data.
They justify the fortune because mostly (aside from the value they think you
place on your data), they have large corporate clients who are willing to
hand over sacks of cash.

@drian.
 
I had my pc doing some avi-to-mpeg2 encoding and had a power outage in
the middle of the process. Now my dv-editing drive has gone away (no
matter which ide channel I put it on, no matter the spot on the chain,
no matter which power feed I use)--- WinXP doesn't "see" that the
drive is there. Bios when booting up doesn't see it.

I suppose the drive is dead. I can't believe it, because it had some
really important avi's on it and due to the size of the files, I
hadn't been able to back them up.

Is there any way of bringing this drive back from the dead? It is a
160GB Maxtor 7200 8MB drive, by the way.
Click to expand...

The fact that your computer BIOS does not see
the hard drive and that it previously did see
it before suggest that your Hard drive's onboard
IDE controller is no longer working.

One trick to recover the data on a HD where the
electronics is fried is to replace the electronic
board with another controller from a known working
hard drive of the same make and model. Note that
many new hard drives use Torx screw. If the head
mechanism and the platters are okay then there may
be a possiblity that you might be able to recover
the data on your dead drive. Note that the hard
disk and its components are very sensitive to
contamination and static electricity. Persons
attempting to repair hard drives need a maintain
a clean and static free environment. Users who
are not technically inclined should seek professional
assistance in recovering data from any
"dead" hard drive.

HTH
Walter Lee.
 
@drian said:
Sorry to hear that. That's ashame such a top-end drive conking out.

I'll type this and you can laugh all you want, but I have read a few times
now that putting a hard-drive in your freezer for 10-15 minutes then trying
to hook it up and accessing it, *may* work. I suspect that is for
mechanical type problems, rather than electrical problems. Your drive is
probably fried electronically.

Other than sitting your drive next to the box of frozen fish, you could try
a data recovery company. Most of them charge a fortune for recovering data.
They justify the fortune because mostly (aside from the value they think you
place on your data), they have large corporate clients who are willing to
hand over sacks of cash.

@drian.
Click to expand...

I'm actually going to try this: http://www.deadharddrive.com/

I'll let you guys know how it comes out. My drive won't spin up, so I
think that this method might actually have a chance.
 
On 9 Sep 2003 12:21:48 -0700, Will Mercer pondered exceedingly, then took quill
in hand and carefully composed...

| I'm actually going to try this: http://www.deadharddrive.com/
|
| I'll let you guys know how it comes out. My drive won't spin up, so I
| think that this method might actually have a chance.

I think there would have to be some genuine life or death data on a hard drive
before I'd go through all that. When something similar happened to me a couple
of months ago, I just sent the drive back to WD for replacement with all the
data still on it. It would surprise me if they have the time to check any
returned drive for content since I'm sure they get piles of them back every day.
It took WD more than a week to get around to checking the drive, confirming it
was bad and closing the RMA.

Thankfully, I had made a Ghost image of my bad hard drive only a few weeks
before it failed. :-)

It will be interesting to know how your experience turns out, though.

Larc



§§§ - Please raise temperature of mail to reply by e-mail - §§§
 
I'm actually going to try this: http://www.deadharddrive.com/

I'll let you guys know how it comes out. My drive won't spin up, so I
think that this method might actually have a chance.
Click to expand...

Oh, man. I was so close. The switching of the boards for the hard
drive actually caused it to power up and spin. I was very hopeful at
that moment. But, unfortunately, I kept getting "disk failed" messages
in bios and when I attached it to my firewire external enclosure,
WinXP doesn't "see" it.

So I looked closer at the chips on the board and I notice that the
writing is significantly different and I am thinking that the bios of
the chips is causing the board not to run the drive.

I guess it's off to a data recovery service. What a shame.
 
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