SATA Hard Drive Inaccessible

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KapsZ28

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Laptop has a Seagate hard drive in it. While in Windows Vista, the OS froze and I had to hold down the power button to shut the laptop off. After that, the laptop will no longer boot off the hard drive. The BIOS shows the drive as detected, but it won't access anything on the hard drive when booting. Can't even get into the recovery console or reinstall the OS.

After removing the hard drive, I tried connecting it to another computer via an external SATA connection to USB. At first the drive was detected, and the Vista Disk Management wanted to initialize the drive in order to use it. Initialize did not work. Now I can't even get back into the Disk Management while the drive is connected through a USB cable. It just hangs until you disconnect the drive. Same thing happens when trying to go into My Computer with the drive connected. I tried this on two different PCs with Vista installed, and also on my server with 2003. While the drive is connected, it just locks up everything until you disconnect it.

Any ideas on how to bring this drive back to life, or is it pretty much dead?
 
Do you have another system with eSATA you can try hooking it up to?
 
ugh, I can't find the list of a bunch of things to do in order to revive a dying drive -- must be on my work system, lol. Anyhow, one of the most common tricks is to stick it in the freezer. ;)
 
eSATA doesn't work either.

I guess at this point sticking it in the freezer shouldn't hurt.
 
Well if the board is fried, the freezer trick isn't going to help. I think you're SOL unless you want to try some of Scott Moulton's data recovery tricks. Usually that involves buying another drive of the same make/model (and as close in serial number as possible) and swapping components.
 
Yeah, it seems like it is the board. Luckily mostly everything is saved on my server, but I still had a bunch of stuff on my desktop and my .PST file hadn't been backed up for about 3 months.
 
Well, laptop HDs are pretty cheap right now so at this point it wouldn't hurt to try swapping out the logic board if you can find another one of the same model as the one that's giving you the problems. Google Scott Moulton and you should be able to find some of his lectures or information on his techniques.
 
Well, the drive is being detected, so I don't think its the board. If you don't need the data off of it, then its a moot point anyhow.

If its still under warranty, just RMA it and throw it in an external enclosure; assuming you buy a new drive for the laptop. 320GB should be around $55 these days.
 
enginurd said:
Well, the drive is being detected, so I don't think its the board. If you don't need the data off of it, then its a moot point anyhow.

If its still under warranty, just RMA it and throw it in an external enclosure; assuming you buy a new drive for the laptop. 320GB should be around $55 these days.
Click to expand...

The BIOS is about the only thing that detects it. Windows just hangs and never really shows the drive at all. I tried putting it in the freezer, but that didn't make a difference.

It's not the end of the world if I can't get the data back, but it kind of sucks missing over 3 months of email.

I already ordered a new drive, which was $80 (7,200 rpm.)
 
So, when I am in Windows, I noticed that the hard drive and partitions show up under Safely Remove Hardware.

drive.jpg


I then tried accessing the hard drive in VirtualLab. It takes nearly 10 minutes to enumerate the hardware, but once it is done it shows the drive as not mounted.

notmounted.jpg


Then I start doing a scan of the drive and about 5 minutes in, I receive a pop-up from Windows to format the hard drive before it can be used. It is referring to the partition that Windows and all my files are installed on. I click on cancel and then I am able to access My Computer without it freezing.

MyComputer.jpg


You'll notice there are two drives. The one that is mounted and has data I can access without a problem. Unfortunately it just contains my virtual machines which are all backed up anyway. The other partition I can't access, but VirtualLab seems to be able to slowly scan it. VirtualLab is a bit too expensive for me to purchase and try to recover data.

What do you all think? Is there software that is cheap or free that might be able to recover what is on the Windows partition? Or is there something else I can try so that the partition will mount properly?
 
If virtual lab sees it, do you think getdataback might see it? Can't remember what it costs, but it should be cheaper than VL
 
Thank you guys!!! The GetDataBack is working. It is a bit slow since this hard drive is messed up, and every once in awhile an I/O error pops up. But so far I have been able to recover everything I was looking for. Good thing I checked too. Apparently I had 2.5GB of files on my Desktop, not to mention the 3 months worth of email. I guess I'll setup the Desktop folder to sync with my server so this doesn't happen again.
 
Glad to hear it's working for you. I've had to send a drive to a clean room before... it's not a very good feeling... not cheap either.
 
Got my new hard drive just over 2 hours ago. I am now back up and running.
 
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