ROT - dead hard drive

1. Try it in a Mac, this can work!
2. Put HD in a plastic bag and freeze for a few hours (this really can work but only in about 2% of the times you try it)
3. Search the network for more tools, can cost lots of money unless you find "evaluation" versions.

Sending a drive to an expert can cost thousands.

Nigel

I've got quotes between £139 and £899 so far...

I haven't found any software that can cope with the drive not appearing in the BIOS. I suspect I need some dedicated hardware - i.e. send it away to someone with the dedicated hardware.

I need to compare the cost against the invoices we won't raise without the data....

arse....

Can you actually hear/feel the drive spinning up when powered? Can you feel the heads actuate when the drive is powered? It may only be the drive electronics, which if the case, can be swapped with another drive of the same type/model. This can be a cheap fix to attempt if the drive is old enough to now be cheap or obsolete. You will need surgeon like skills to swap the ribbon cable, but it's doable, and if the PCB was the fault you should have a running drive for at least long enough to get the data off. If the drive isn't even seen by the bios it sounds like the electronics have fried, so it may be worth a try.

In article , Tim Hobbs writes

Yes several, but send me an email address so's I can contact you off list, unless the list doesn't mind having the lot inflicted on it...

Regards,

Simonm.

This works (I've done it with 100% success). You'll probably need tiny Torx screwdrivers, from a really good tool shop (even RS didn't carry the right size when I last looked). IBM/Toshiba drives are T5. The HDA is T6, which is commonly available, but do NOT open that under any circumstances!

If it's a SW issue, don't, whatever you do, try any 'automatic' repair. You are risking the data. The advice to connect to a Mac (or Linux) is good - it won't try any silly formatting ruses - but I don't think you can mount NTFS directly (haven't tried). FAT should mount though.

If you want contact with a good (but not necessarily cheap) data recovery service contact me off list.

Regards,

Simonm.

NTFS can be mounted with a couple of commands like (as root)

mkdir /mnt mount -t ntfs /dev/Hda1 /mnt -ro

If you use a Knoppix live CD thats incredibly good at handling all this without doing ANY write to the HD.

Steve

I'll give that a go when I get a moment - would be very useful. I wonder what it does with the permissions, etc.

That's the key aspect - not writing to the target at all.

Regards,

Simonm.

The permissions will be OK, if you are root. Knoppix is great for bringing your system up well enough to connect it to something else to extract everything to.

Steve

A cheap (and pretty good) tool to boot off for data recovery (if you can get the drive to recognise) is at

for about 2 and a half quid you can get an adaptor to plug the drive into a proper IDE channel on a PC.

Try that - sometimes the PC bios will find it - its how I recovered my laptop

Si

I had exactly the same problem with my laptop in early August. I removed the HDD and found (quite by chance) that it managed to read the disc if I held it vertically and then *very gently* squeezed the HHD case, which presumably brought the read-heads back into contact with the disc. It still fell over from time-to-time but, with patience over the next couple of hours, I managed to keep reviving it for long enough to transfer all the files over to another machine.

Good luck - a total HDD failure is not a pleasant experience.

- Tom Bennett

My books are essentially paper based. I simply use the computer to produce invoices (via a WP), track expenses and do the maths for my accounts and check that being on the VAT FRS is still profitable. A HDD failure would be a pain but would cost me any money, a fire though...

Definition of a backup: exercise started 10 mins after you need it!

In article , Thos writes

It was more likely something to do with the head actuator and/or the motor bearings, and the change of orientation was just enough to keep it going.

Disk heads never touch the disk in normal use. They fly over it at a carefully controlled height. There's a landing zone set aside for switch-off, that carries no data. If they do touch it's often goodbye disk (in that section) and heads. This is why radial shocks are usually not damaging, whereas axial ones can be.

Regards,

Simonm.

Sorry, I should have added that. The symptoms were the same, however: The machine wouldn't recognise that a HDD was there, but I could hear the disc spinning (virtually constantly).

- Tom.