Dead Hard Disc

[jimbo]

My father in laws Hard disc appears to have died.

The PC just doesn't recognise having a disc installed at all and won't boot. you can here the hard disc 'bump' a couple of times and then spin down.
I've booted from CD. all seems OK, but no sign of the C drive at all. I therefore suspect the actual disc itself (and data) is OK, but the hardware/firmware has failed.

He has no backup and would like the data off it (although not at any price). Its Western Digital SATA WD caviar SE. Is there anything I can try, or it is straight to a data recover company - anybody tried one of these?

thanks - I guess I need to talk to him about seting up backup when this one is sorted.

 

[Pukmeister]

Check his BIOS settings to see if the hard drive is recognised in BIOS under bootable devices. It could be as simple as replacing the motherboard BIOS battery and restoring a few settings?

Secondly, check the power and data cables to the HDD are properly inserted.

If all else fails, you could try installing the drive in another PC as a slave unit to see if you can access the data (subject to permissions).

 

[Fanum]

There are companies around who will remove the platter (the bit that the actual data is stored on) and replace it in the working bits of a similar drive unit to recover what they can.

a quick google turns up these people, who will do it for £97

There are also dozens of videos that may help......ones about swapping bits over, software tips etc....if you go to this link, you will see many listed in the 'other links section to the right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA28zXo5e6I

 

[Myke Rocks]

Sorry, but;

My father in laws Hard disc appears to have died.

The PC just doesn't recognise having a disc installed at all and won't boot. you can here the hard disc 'bump' a couple of times and then spin down.
I've booted from CD. all seems OK, but no sign of the C drive at all. I therefore suspect the actual disc itself (and data) is OK, but the hardware/firmware has failed.

He has no backup and would like the data off it (although not at any price). Its Western Digital SATA WD caviar SE. Is there anything I can try, or it is straight to a data recover company - anybody tried one of these?

thanks - I guess I need to talk to him about seting up backup when this one is sorted.

Western digital says it all.

Maybe I have just been unlucky, but, over the years I bought 4 Western Digital Hard Caviar disks. All failed within a year.

I now buy Samsung, and have yet to have a failure with them.

Buy a new Sata Hard Disk. Get it working.
Buy a USB Sata hard disk case for under £10.00 Take the old hard disk & put it in the case.
Pop the lot in the freezer for 24 hours.
Plug it into computer afterwards & you have a 90% chance of getting your data off it before it warms up properly.
Myke

 

[Urbster]

Have you tried the freezer trick ?
It wont save the drive but you may be able to recover any lost data.

Every hard drive that I have had that has failed, has been a Western Digital !!
Having returned from holiday in Oct I had the infamous click of death when I went to boot up my main PC.
This too had a WD 250 GB Sata 11 drive in it.
Most of my data was backed up on a separate Seagate external drive,but there was still stuff on the WD that I needed.
I placed it in a freezer bag and put it in the freezer for 24 hours, let it come back to room temperature and stuck it in a hard drive docking station It booted and I retrieved everything off of it.
I have now put a Seagate Barracuda in my PC.

 

[cookie]

my last WD drive failed in 6 months. top of the range caviar black model too

had a few that kept going too though.

as regards the OP. put a new disc in and reinstall windows. plug the old one in as a slave and see if you can read anything.

if not, get one of the available programs to help. i think they are sometimes free up to the point of actually reclaiming the data, so you can actually see if it is possible.
if that fails, it's probably a pro job and will be wincingly expensive.

it would have all been so simple with a proper backup, but hardly anybody bothers

 

[jimbo]

Thanks chaps,

Just tried the 'bad' disc in in home machine as a slave - As suspected it is dead. Just nasty clicking noises.

I don't think that my Father in law is too bothered (ie he won't pay 100 notes), so I'll try the freezer trick.

and I'll sort him out a new (non-WD) disk and a BACKUP!

thanks

 

[Grey Beard]

Sometimes it is just the controller module in the Hard Disk Drive and if you had another drive like it, you could try swapping the controller part to the dead disk.

Doesn't sound like the boot sector is corrupted if you cannot read it while booting with another HDD and operating system.

Grey Beard

 

[jimbo]

Sometimes it is just the controller module in the Hard Disk Drive and if you had another drive like it, you could try swapping the controller part to the dead disk.

Doesn't sound like the boot sector is corrupted if you cannot read it while booting with another HDD and operating system.

Grey Beard

Thanks - I don't have another disk the same, but I might look into that. I suspect the data migth be OK. Whatever PC its in doesn't see the disc at all - its like it not plugged in, so my very limited knowledge point me a the hardware/controller rather than the actual physical disc itself.
I might ask at the local PC repair shop if they have any old part suitable.

 

[longdog]

Someone has already suggested the old "pop it in the fridge" ploy, so I won't...........

But I will suggest downloading a Linux distro such as Knoppix and burning it onto a CD-ROM, (or a USB flash drive), and putting it into the CD drive in a bid to access and recover info from the hard drive.

Here's another for a "How to" link