HDD dead, data recovery and others...

[Shagshag]

hello,

this afternoon when i came back, one of my hdd drive had disapeared
from windows2000, and there was a window warning about the fact that
one of the drive was hot-unplugged and that there could be data loss.
since that i can no lonner have access to this drive and any of the
partition contained in it. also it did not show anymore during bios
ide detection (i think this is called POST).

it is a 20gb barracudda hard drive, with very important data for me,
of course as a bloody idiot i am, i had no backup at all. i've tried
to plug it onto another machine, tried another ide cable, another
molex, another master slave configuration, to let this disk alone in a
system, with other disks. nothing had worked , have you other ideas?

and i bios didn't see it anymore, i just can not know what to do next.
are there some tolerant fault software or diagnostics one able to work
on a drive not seen from bios ? (at least to know if it is totally
dead or if something can be done)

also i wonder this drive was a smart drive with smart enabled, why
does it not warn of something before its failure? (i just can not
understand why smart did not complained before its death)

i'm also thinking of using data recovery services :
http://www.datarecovery.demon.co.uk/
http://www.adv-data.com/
http://www.mjm.co.uk/data-recovery.html
http://www.ontrack.fr/easyrecovery/
http://www.datex.fr/
what do you think of this kind of work ? is it really valuable ? how
much do you think it could cost ? (this point frigthens me a lot)

really thank.

 

[Rod Speed]

this afternoon when i came back, one of my hdd drive had disapeared
from windows2000, and there was a window warning about the fact
that one of the drive was hot-unplugged and that there could be data
loss. since that i can no lonner have access to this drive and any of
the partition contained in it. also it did not show anymore during bios
ide detection (i think this is called POST).

it is a 20gb barracudda hard drive, with very important data
for me, of course as a bloody idiot i am, i had no backup at
all. i've tried to plug it onto another machine, tried another ide
cable, another molex, another master slave configuration, to let
this disk alone in a system, with other disks. nothing had worked ,

Looks like its died. Does it actually spin up now ?

have you other ideas?

You could try running it loose, with just the power
cable connect to the drive, and checking if it spins
up. You may need to hold your hand flat on the top
to feel it spin because those drives are quite quiet.

If it doesnt spin up, try flexing the power connector pair
GENTLY and see if it ever does spin up. I have seen
some situations where a drive develops a bad joint at
the power connector and it doesnt always get power.

Dont run it out of the case for long if it does spin up, those
Barracuda get very hot in a surprisingly short time when
they cant conduct heat to the drive bay stack metal.

and i bios didn't see it anymore, i just can not know what
to do next. are there some tolerant fault software or
diagnostics one able to work on a drive not seen from bios ?

Not if it isnt spinning up.

If it is spinning up, see if Seagate's diagnostic can see it.

(at least to know if it is totally dead or if something can be done)

You may be able to swap the logic card from a known good
identical model and be able to get the data off your drive.

It may not work too, but a 20GB isnt going to cost much to try that.

also i wonder this drive was a smart drive with smart enabled,
why does it not warn of something before its failure?

SMART can only warn of imminent failure if the drive fails gradually.
If say it never spins up one time, SMART cant warn about that.

(i just can not understand why smart did not complained before its death)

There are some common failure modes that give no warning with hard drives.

i'm also thinking of using data recovery services :
http://www.datarecovery.demon.co.uk/
http://www.adv-data.com/
http://www.mjm.co.uk/data-recovery.html
http://www.ontrack.fr/easyrecovery/
http://www.datex.fr/
what do you think of this kind of work ? is it really valuable ?

Yes, it usually does get the data back if the heads
havent actually gouged the hell out of the media.

how much do you think it could cost ?
(this point frigthens me a lot)

Yeah, you'd better be sitting down when you see the price.

www.retrodata.co.uk is much more reasonably priced,
but I have no idea about how effective he is with data
recovery with a drive that isnt seen by the bios anymore.
Wouldnt do any harm to ask him if you arent going to
pay the other prices, and you dont have anything much
to lose if you plan to toss the drive in the bin.