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Possible broken HD, what do I do now?

R

rygy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 19, 2003
Messages
448
Here's the story: I had my PC on all day uploading on Azureus, I came home, played Prince of Persia Warrior Within and went to play some mp3's stored on my 120GB JB Western Digital hard drive which is a slave on my IDE 0 channel and used for movies, mucis and various files.

When I went to play the mp3 in WMP it said it could not find the file. So I went to browse the drive only to find it not recognized in My Computer. I restarted and at boot-up after POST it hung trying to recognize the IDE drives. Also at this time the infamous clicking came from the drive so I quickly turned off my computer, opened the side and fully disconnected the drive. It is sitting on my desk, I went to WD's website to find out that I still have warranty until 1/5/2005. I had a lot of files on there that are not all backed up and would like to get them off with very little $ cost.

Will running the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic be able to fix this drive or will it just tell me it is screwed. I am asking this cause I do not have a floppy in my PC right now and would like to think I am accomplishing something by asking these questions while I wait to get a floppy installed.

What can I do to try to get the files saved? Thank you.
 
I ran the Data Lifeguard Tools with the 120GB drive connected. This is what I saw for the drive information. None of the picture has been altered so look at the serial number and model number. Makes no sense to me.
DLGT.JPG
 
short of spending hundreds on data recovery you're up a creek without a paddle.
RMA it, or send it to a professional data recovery place....
the only other option is to buy another drive just like it, swap controller boards, and pray to your diety that the controller board was what isnt working on it.

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. once this is resolved, go out and buy a dual layer DVDRW drive, I reccomend the NEC or toshiba (im getting the toshi) and a bunch of DL DVDR discs for backup.
 
As LadyJaqie so eloquently put it, basically your boat sunk and a paddle won’t help. Thankfully your drive is under warrantee; sadly your data is not.

I have tried the controller card trick a few times, I was lucky once. Keep in mind if you pull the controller card your warrantee is null, void, and a thing of the past.

Hard drives for the most part have become so reliable we don’t give them a second thought, until they die.

I will suggest this as a last resort. Put the drive in the freezer over night. (No, I’m not kidding). Once out of the freezer give it a few light love taps (gentle, not anger motivated) with a mallet or piece of wood. Quickly put it back in the system cold and see if it works. Every once and a while this works long enough to recover data. It’s a luck thing, but you have nothing to loose and it doesn’t cost you a penny to try.

Luck
 
Should I put the drive in a plastic bag or ziplock bag or something? How long should I leave it in there? If this indeed does work, will I have enough time to back up at least some of my data to DVD? Thanks for the replies.
 
rygy said:
Should I put the drive in a plastic bag or ziplock bag or something? How long should I leave it in there? If this indeed does work, will I have enough time to back up at least some of my data to DVD? Thanks for the replies.
Click to expand...

You could use a plastic bag, wouldn’t see why not. I usually do overnight time wise. I have also been know to use two blocks of dry ice, one on the bottom one on top if I need a lot of time for recovery.

Let me be clear, this is a thing to try, no guarantee at all. Although I would love to claim all credit for this idea it was passed on to me from a data recovery center technician who understood I could in no way afford to have my data (family pictures) recovered.

I have also managed to recover a few Tivo and RePlay disks with this method as well.

Now, if you go to all the trouble and your still getting the “clicks of death”, face it, your done. Unless of course your willing to try swapping a controller card, again facing all those risks.

Again, Luck
 
Well see the drive doesn't click anymore when I have it installed. I had just connected the power cable after I had heard the clicks the first time and booted my computer, the drive spun normally without clicking. I then changed the IDE cable and plugged the drive into the computer. The boot process where the IDE drives are being recognized took a long time and windows started but the drive is seen as in the screenshot above. I haven't heard the drive ever click before the first time and never heard it click after.
 
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