Data Recovery

My 30 GB drive started making a clanking noise last night and today finally lost the will to live I wanted to know if there was any way to retrieve the data that was on there? When it was connected and I switched my PC on, after the clanking noise the message on the screen said that there were no hard drives at all even though the drive was the slave. I installed a new drive and windows booted fine but I would still like to get some of the stuff that was on the broken drive.

Cheers.

Si

You could try the freezer trick I first learned from Mr.G I believe.
Put the drive in a plastic bag trying to get as much air as possible out of it, then place it in the freezer. Let it get good and cold and then rush it to your comp, connect it and recover what you can from it. Remembering this is the last time it will ever work.

Other than that I'd say if you really wanted to put the effort in you could disassemble it and play with things, but you probably will muck it up even worse, but hey its alread dead :dead: .

You could also since its dead beat on it a bit (softly at first) and see if you can knock some sense into it. heh. But really the freezer trick I have heard can work, and I'm sure there are some others, just wait before you try something for someone elses response. I'd hate to be the one to offer you a suggestion you take and it completely kills the drive when someone else has a suggestion that will save it.

Does it spin up when you start your computer?
(Either touch it, or put your ear to it to find out)...

If it does, what happens when you enter windows?
(I know you said it didn't find it, but try one more time)

If it is littered with bad sectors, use a zip-lock bag and follow SNGX1275's instructions above... (I'd say around 30 min. in the freezer should be about right...)
NOTE: Don't use chckdisk or scndisk to scan for bad sectors after you've had the drive in the freezer! You'll have a very short time that the drive works before it'll be totally dead!


If it doesn't spin up:

Have you swapped this drive much in and out of the system? If so, try applying some pressure (not much!) to the powerconnector, and move it around a bit to see if it'll start then (You'll have to do this with your 'puter on!)

If it starts, hold the powerconnector in that position, boot into windows and see if you can't copy all the info you need...
NOTE: If you get lot's of bad sectors, do the freezer... But you'll have less time at your disposal, so make sure you can find the "sweetspot" for the powerconnector!

If it has none bad sectors (you don't have a problem copying data), contact the hdd manufacturer and get a new controller card... That should add a couple of years to that hdd's life...