Notebook hard drive revival

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff Malka
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeff Malka

My Toshiba notebook's 120 GB HD just died: it kept making clicking sounds
and would not boot past the bios into XP.

Fortunately I have good image (Acronis True Image) backups. So I bought a
new 160 GB notebook HD, - SATA like the old one and started the restore of
both the OS and the data partitions.

However my latest backup is 4 weeks old. So it would be nice to access the
recent files on the old HD if possible. Before buying the new HD I had
tried booting the notebook with an XP boot CD which succeeded BUT it just
could not find the old dead HD. Any thoughts as to what I could do to
briefly bring back the old hard drive so I can make a more recent backup of
the data partition?

Thanks.
 
Jeff Malka said this on 1/7/2009 6:23 PM:
My Toshiba notebook's 120 GB HD just died: it kept making clicking sounds
and would not boot past the bios into XP.

Fortunately I have good image (Acronis True Image) backups. So I bought a
new 160 GB notebook HD, - SATA like the old one and started the restore of
both the OS and the data partitions.

However my latest backup is 4 weeks old. So it would be nice to access the
recent files on the old HD if possible. Before buying the new HD I had
tried booting the notebook with an XP boot CD which succeeded BUT it just
could not find the old dead HD. Any thoughts as to what I could do to
briefly bring back the old hard drive so I can make a more recent backup of
the data partition?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Some people have commented that they put them in the refridge or freezer
for a period of time. The cool down alters the materials in the
drive. If a bearing is going, cooling it might make it spin better.

Extremes are the killer as with heat. So don't leave it in there for a
week. Try an hour.
 
Jeff said:
My Toshiba notebook's 120 GB HD just died: it kept making clicking sounds
and would not boot past the bios into XP.

Fortunately I have good image (Acronis True Image) backups. So I bought a
new 160 GB notebook HD, - SATA like the old one and started the restore of
both the OS and the data partitions.

However my latest backup is 4 weeks old. So it would be nice to access the
recent files on the old HD if possible. Before buying the new HD I had
tried booting the notebook with an XP boot CD which succeeded BUT it just
could not find the old dead HD. Any thoughts as to what I could do to
briefly bring back the old hard drive so I can make a more recent backup of
the data partition?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Is the old hard drive visible in the BIOS? If so you may have a few bad
sectors in the Windows loader area and a program like Spinrite can fix
them long enough to do a backup.
 
Big_Al said:
Jeff said this on 1/7/2009 6:23 PM:

Some people have commented that they put them in the refridge or
freezer for a period of time. The cool down alters the materials
in the drive. If a bearing is going, cooling it might make it spin
better.

Extremes are the killer as with heat. So don't leave it in there
for a week. Try an hour.
Click to expand...

I've heard that. Will give it a try. Thanks.
 
In case this may be helpful to someone else:

I bought a HD USB enclosure locally and tried the bad HD that way. No
matter what I did, the clicking persisted and the drive could not be read at
all. Having nothing to lose I put it in the freezer for an hour and tried
again via the USB enclosure. Still nothing. Banged on its sides, turned it
around, etc. Still nothing.

So, I decided that was all there was to do and I should remember to backup
more frequently.

Then - having "really" nothing to lose now, I put the bad HD back into the
enclosure and connected the USB cord. Of course it clicked and the drive
was unreadable. But, every now and then the LED light came on. So,
thinking I was ruining or scratching the drive beyond any use (but it did
not matter now anyway) I just left it connected and clicking away and went
to do some thing else. 1 hour later, I came back and the connection light
was on, the clicking was gone, and all partitions on the drive fully
readable!!!! So I quickly backed up all the data files to my external HD,
- twice.

Lesson learned: sometimes it may pay to just leave these drives clicking
away for very long and they may suddenly catch and become readable again. I
thought that might scratch the drive further, but apparently it does not.

Now I will wipe the bad HD and trash it. (It's readable after all). Or
maybe I will take it apart to see what it looks like inside ........
 
This begs the question: did the freezing help, or was that just incidental?
From what you've stated, I can't tell for certain. Like for how long had
you tried before trying the freezing experiment? If only a few minutes,
that's one thing. If an hour, that's quite another.

And from another point of view, could heating it up some possibly help? I
would logically think that if anything could help a stuck drive, it would be
heating it up, to make the lubricant in the bearings less viscous. (Just
think of starting a car engine (or even a transmission) in the cold vs in
the warm weather, for example; it's MUCH easier for the engine to start and
run in warm weather, in part due to the reduced viscosity of the oil
lubricants), (the other part being the battery).
 
I am no expert in these things, so I can only relate what happened.

When the drive crashed, there was no temperature problem, the laptop not
having left my home for about a month or more. It had run normally a few
hours before and Speedfan which I use to monitor the drive showed no
problems. I shut the laptop lid down (sending the drive into suspended
state) as I always do.

4 hours later, I lifted the lid of the laptop and heard clicking and no
access to anything. In panic I kept it trying for 3-4 minutes. When nothing
happened I rebooted. Ctrl Alt Del did not work so I used the power button.
Still no drive and continuous clicking as the heads tried to read
something - unsuccessfully. I left it on for another 5 minutes or so. I
took the HD out and tried tapping it. Nothing doing. Did this several
times. Booted with the Acronis rescue disk (Linux), but the drive kept
clicking and still could not be recognized or found. Tried for about 2-3
minutes and gave up.

I went out and bought a new HD, installed it and restored my 1 month old
image backups. Took forever (almost 24 hours). Then I bought a HD enclosure
and used it to connect the bad drive to the USB port of a desktop PC.
Repeated all the above several times. Nothing and the clicking persisted.

On the desktop I searched the web for suggestions. Read about the freezer
trick but it said to use it as a last measure. When nothing else worked, I
put the hard drive in the freezer for an hour and tried again with the USB
enclosure. Not only did the clicking continue, but there was now a grinding
sound. Yet I ran it for about 3-4 minutes and finally gave up totally on the
HD. The advice on the web said that when a HD goes bad (including the
clicking sound), to stop it immediately or the drive becomes unrecoverable
even by the specialized outfits. I tried again a couple of hours later with
still no success.

One day later having nothing to lose anymore, I decided to put the drive
again in the USB enclosure and try again. Again the continuous clicking and
no access. Ran ontrack recovery software but it could not find the drive to
work on. Watched it run for 30 minutes while watching TV. No luck. Since
I considered the drive trashed, and I saw the led appear intermittently for
a second, I left the room and went elsewhere. 1 hour later I returned to
find the clicking gone and the drive and all its 3 partitions accessible. I
quickly backed everything up - twice. It was late at night so I then shut
down the laptop, sighing with relief.

Next morning (today), I restarted the laptop, attached the enclosed HD
curious to see if it still worked and: no clicking and smooth access to the
entire HD. I am now wiping it (as I write this) using Acronis utility, and
it is working smoothly.

I have no idea what happened, but as they say, "it is better to be lucky
than good - any day"!

Jeff
 
Yeah, I guess you should count your blessings! I guess at this way there
is no way to know for sure, but at least it sounds possible that the
freezing might have done something. Hard to know for sure.
 
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