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Broken Hard Drive, data recoverable?

D

DoubleDeala

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 26, 2002
Messages
119
Hey all, first time posting in here...after being a member for so long.

Anyhow, i have a gigabyte 8knxp ultra mb with raid and running 3 hd's on the raid channels, and 3 optical drives on the regular ide. Running p4 at...3.2 ghz (i dunno if that's really relevant).

Well, i was running 3 hd's until a few days ago. 2 hd's are identical 40 gb's, and 1 is 75gb's. I had the 75 gb and a 40 gb on raid channel 2, and the other 40 on chan 1. Now that I think about it, I should have had the 2 40's on their own channel, but maybe it doesn't matter. The 40 on it's own channel held the os - winxp sp2.

I've had this setup for 2 yrs? maybe I'm not sure, 1.5 yrs or so. No problems until a month ago, it started freezing on me. I had to turn it off and then reboot. Then after 4 occurrences, i'd reboot and the loading screen...(bios)...would display ide 0 not detected ide 1 not detected and so forth, it usually shows the hd's. I'd have to turn it off, and leave it off for awhile, I usually just let it sit until the next morning. It'd work the next morning for sure. But 2 nights ago, it froze and i turned it off, tried turning it back on but said it was not detected. so i left it off until the next morning. i tried to boot it, but still said not detected. I opened the case and tried reconfiguring the ide's. I unplugged all but one of the 40 gigs(the one with the os). and it said not detected, neither raid or off raid channels. I did the same with the other 40 gb, it was detected, and same with the 75 gb. So i came to the conclusion that the 40 gb with the os is messed up.

I can hear it spinning when i put up a stethoscope to the hd, but it says not detected still!!!! agh...

they're all ibm deskstars, 7200 rpms and all of that. Is there a solution anyone can recommend?
I'd also like to recover my files as I have a big paper on it. There are businesses that recover data for you isnt there? how much do they run? can I do it myself?

Thanks in advance for all your help.
 
lots of people have had good experiences with File Scavenger
 
I'm having a very good experience with File Scanvenger right now (as a matter of fact).

Its 98% recovering about 232GB of "data". *cough* pr0n *cough*
I started around 2:30pm and now its 10:00... and I still have about 90 Gigs to go.

*tip: you'll get a lot better results if you dont use flaky external hard disk enclosures for the
problem drive.
 
file scavenger is a tool that you use in an os to connect to a hd that is recognized by the os, right? well my problem is that the hd isnt being detected, not in bios, not in xp, not in dos. I just tried plugging it in a few mins ago, it loaded up to windows, then froze and came up with bsod. I got a feeling this thing needs time to "cool down" or some dealy....to boot.

Is there any way to "transplant" the physical parts of the drive to another "good" drive? Like take the data discs inside the hd and transplant it into the other 40 gb drive?
 
don't buy deathstars your just begging for a repeat experiance of this just put the drive as a slave on a cable and load up an os on a good drive. After that see if you a transfer files from the bad drive to the good one.
 
DoubleDeala said:
file scavenger is a tool that you use in an os to connect to a hd that is recognized by the os, right? well my problem is that the hd isnt being detected, not in bios, not in xp, not in dos. I just tried plugging it in a few mins ago, it loaded up to windows, then froze and came up with bsod. I got a feeling this thing needs time to "cool down" or some dealy....to boot.

Is there any way to "transplant" the physical parts of the drive to another "good" drive? Like take the data discs inside the hd and transplant it into the other 40 gb drive?
Click to expand...

Ah yes, the old Death Star syndrome. Your not alone, I have three here from customers with similar issues. Maxtor seems to be #2 on the list (no flames please, it’s what I see)

If what you are saying about booting when cool is holding true try this. 2 pieces of dry ice, lay one on some paper, lay the drive on the dry ice (wired and ready to go) and place the other piece of dry ice on top. Wait about 20 minutes or so then try to boot and recover. Sometimes a night in the freezer will do it, but I’ve had more success with the dry ice. I’ve even been able to install windows over top of windows this way to make the drive bootable for recovery.

Sometimes the freezing thing works for totally “stuck” drives as well. Some carefully applied “tapping” on the side(s) of the drive is sometimes necessary to free up the insides. Again, once (if) you get your data back, toss the drive.

If you have two identical drives, one working and one not you can in fact swap parts, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Many of the data platters are glass and don’t like being man handled, literally. The other problem is this, once you swap the parts and recover your data you now have 2 drives for the trashcan.

You can also pay for data recovery, but, no offense, it’s doubtful what you need to recover is worth the cost.

Luck
 
My dad had a server drive freeze up on him. He took the drive, and turned it back and forth in a very rapid motion. It shook the plates loose and he was able to boot up the drive. It's all a matter of luck really.
 
yeah i would try putting the drive in a ziplock bag and freezing it over night. yes this sounds like a dumb idea, but it should get you up and running long enough for you to back up all the data on the drive.

toss the drive, and don't get another deathstar :)

good luck to you, and becareful with condensation
 
yeah i was afraid of the freezing overnight dealy...and taking it out just to have water condensate all over it..

the "death star" name, hahahaha, I USED to be into the whole upgrading your computer every month to the newest and best, but then it just got too expensive. But I've never came upon the nickname death star.

I'm gonna drop the hd into the freezer now....hope it works.... .:crosses fingers:.
 
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