Trying to recover a hard drive!

  • Thread starter Thread starter david
  • Start date Start date
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david

Well, my Fujistsu Hard Drive finally seems to have gone. I had my
computer on all night and in the morning, I heard the D: drive
clunking. So I shut it off and when I turned it on, I got a hard disk
failure. Boot disk time. The first time I went to DOS using a boot
disk, I could still access the drive - although it made a awful
clunking noise when I typed in DIR - but it gave me the directory
(leading me to believe it is just a problem with the boot sector but I
could be wrong). Anyways, I copied a few files off the drive onto my
C: drive. That worked so I figured that my drive was ok but just
acting up a little. I then rebooted and went to see if it was working
in Windows 98....but it didn't recognize it in windows. Alas, since
then, I have not been able to access the drive in DOS and I don't know
why.

What happened is this : it is my Master Slave. So my Quantum boots
fine, but I get a Slave Hard drive failure when I boot. So I use the
boot disk and it comes up with DOS - which is great, but now, it
doesn't seem to recognize the drive any more in DOS. I only get C:
and the CDROM - but not D: . I am hoping to get back to a situation
where I can see it again, if just to copy files to another drive.

Is there any help for me? Is there a program that will be able to
recover or at least access the drive?

Running Win98, 96 meg ram.

Thanks
 
david said:
Well, my Fujistsu Hard Drive finally seems to have gone. I had my
computer on all night and in the morning, I heard the D: drive
clunking. So I shut it off and when I turned it on, I got a hard disk
failure. Boot disk time. The first time I went to DOS using a boot
disk, I could still access the drive - although it made a awful
clunking noise when I typed in DIR - but it gave me the directory
(leading me to believe it is just a problem with the boot sector but I
could be wrong). Anyways, I copied a few files off the drive onto my
C: drive. That worked so I figured that my drive was ok but just
acting up a little. I then rebooted and went to see if it was working
in Windows 98....but it didn't recognize it in windows. Alas, since
then, I have not been able to access the drive in DOS and I don't know
why.
Click to expand...
I have 9 of them sitting on my returns shelf. Its a well known fault. The
epoxy encapsulation of the main chip becomes conductive with age shorting
out the chip. Ones it shorts out that's the end, there's no way out.
Exchanging controller board with a good one does not work either because
each board stores its calibration marks on the drive itself and these are
different for each controller. This is done during the manufacturing stage.
Few relevant web sites:
http://www.classactioncounsel.com/fujitsu-litigation.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/27109.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/27112.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/27926.html
 
I have 9 of them sitting on my returns shelf. Its a well known fault. The
epoxy encapsulation of the main chip becomes conductive with age shorting
out the chip. Ones it shorts out that's the end, there's no way out.
Exchanging controller board with a good one does not work either because
each board stores its calibration marks on the drive itself and these are
different for each controller. This is done during the manufacturing stage.
Few relevant web sites:
http://www.classactioncounsel.com/fujitsu-litigation.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/27109.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/27112.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/27926.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info - but why was I able to access the drive in DOS
(only the one time though) even when the drive was gone?
 
david said:
Thanks for the info - but why was I able to access the drive in DOS
(only the one time though) even when the drive was gone?
Click to expand...
I was able to recover data from some of them by putting them in a freezer
(in a sealed plastic bag) for 15 minutes and then immediately installing
them in a PC with another HDD and using Norton Ghost to clone them.
 
That's awesome! The only problem I have is not enough room on my
other hard drive to clone this one. I wonder why the freezing helps?
Is there another program that will let me pick and choose which files
I want and don't want?

Thanks for the speedy reply and the info.
 
At the company I work for we have had hundreds of fujitsu drives that have
the usual failing error of disk boot failure coming up and the occasional
one grinding loudly. All that seems to be wrong with the drives is they wont
boot, make an image of the drive onto another one and your system is intact.
I have been able to do this with 99% of all our customers fujitsu failures.

We also have a good supplier who offered to accept any fujitsu drives back
that are still within the fujitsu 3 year warranty period and are 10gb or
above. They give us a good value which allows us to buy at least 40gb drives
in their place. We only ever bought 20 from them but they must have swapped
about 700 in total for us. If anybody is in the same position and are a
trade company who has an account with micro-p (Micro Peripherals) just ask
them if they can do it for you and they will arrange for credit of value of
around £30-42 for each drive depending on size and rpm speed. Other people
who just think they have a dead drive sat there can contact their supplier
of the drive as fujitsu say that even if the supplier only offers you 12
months warranty on the component they are obligated to fully cooperate with
the full manufacturers warranty. Or send them straight back to fujitsu for a
credit note or cheque to spend.

Hope this helps someone as I know it helped me finding that only the boot
sector is damaged when the drives first start dying.
 
Ok, it seems like the boot sector to me, so how do I go about
recovering the data? It won't recognize the drive in DOS or windows -
I get the usual error on startup about SLAVE HARD DRIVE FAILED. and
what programs should I use to clone or copy the data? Thanks

It is in my freeze right now!
 
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