Toshiba Laptop Hard drive issue

[Ghostrocket]

Hi all

I have two questions,
Customer has a Toshiba laptop that her 2 year old knocked off a work surface. Now it wont boot to Windows Vista it goes through the Toshiba POST. She says its making noises and i have heard it screech every now and again.
I am fairly certain shes damaged the hard drive, but does anyone else have any thoughts ?

Following on from that when using my Plexus USB 2.0 to SATA cable in Windows XP Pro i get the USB noise/ping to suggest its found it and it installs the driver, as it says in the windows pop up bubble. However nothing in disk management or explorer. Now is this because the disk is obviously damaged or because i am running XP and the Hard disk is Vista??

I didnt think it should matter as it should be seen as a USD device from my cable

Any comments would be great thanks
John

 

[Ididmyc600]

its damaged alright,

try sticking it in the freezer overnight and it may work enough to recover data off it, then bin it

 

[Ghostrocket]

Seriously put it in the freezer why ?

 

[hughva]

Seriously put it in the freezer why ?

The theory is it might shrink the parts enough to free up the read arm if it's stuck. Some say this has worked for them, but I've never had any luck with it on several drives.
Google "Freeze hard drive:
http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

 

[Ididmyc600]

ive had some luck with drives that dont want to read, you get a few minutes at a time, but enough to recover data