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Help with failed drive

gobnu1

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 12, 2003
Messages
94
My wife's friend brought over an old Seagate 20GB IDE drive that her husband, who died of brain cancer last year, put all their family photos on way back when. I tried using it but it clicks (does spin), tried the freezer trick, NG. Any other tricks or can you recommend a reliable place for recovery (already told her it wouldn't be cheap) TIA
 
If you tried the freezer trick you may have reduced the chance of recovery beyond the capabilities of a recovery company. I would stop messing with the drive.
 
The clicking is the sound of the read head moving incorrectly, if you're at that point it's likely already destroyed a good portion of the disk surface, the second you hear that you need to pull the drive if you want to save anything. And even then you have to expect to pay thousands to a data recovery firm.

Sorry about that, but it's what's happening.

P.S. To anyone else reading this don't ever try the "freezer trick" because it may allow the drive to function a few minutes after freezing it will destroy a section of the disk doing so. The amount of data you're likely to save is pretty small compared to what you'll destroy.
 
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