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Any tricks to resuscitate a hard drive?

P

peteyo

Member
I replaced my laptop hardrive thinking it was failing. I pulled a bunch of pictures, movies, and important documents off the harddrive before I replaced it. I shut it down hot and has not worked since. I accidently forgot a few important files.
Is this drive junk or does it have any hope? Thanks
 
Hook it up to a good computer as a secondary drive to see if you can get the data. If not, a program called Spinrite has revived several bad drives for me over the years. Good luck.
 
peteyo said:
I replaced my laptop hardrive thinking it was failing. I pulled a bunch of pictures, movies, and important documents off the harddrive before I replaced it. I shut it down hot and has not worked since. I accidently forgot a few important files.
Is this drive junk or does it have any hope? Thanks
Click to expand...
:colbert: We need a baseline to start. Otherwise we'll end up wasting our time and yours.

What $$ value do you place on the data to be recovered?
 
No big value to anyone but myself. Keep me for having to redo some spread sheets and what not. Just figured there might be some quick and easy tricks to try.
 
peteyo said:
bake it? like throw it in the oven? lol I have heard this before, maybe for video cards?
Click to expand...

Yeah, it might be freeze it for hard drives.... bake video cards, freeze hard drives, yeah that sounds about right 😛 Have a google and see if others have had success.
 
I had a drive that freezing didn't help and spinrite got stuck on, but I have had drives before that when frozen would come back to life enough to copy some stuff off.
 
Freezing has let me copy some stuff before the hdd completely died too. Put it in the freezer overnight in a securely tightened plastic bag so moisture can't damage it. No guarantees though, only worked once for me.
 
peteyo said:
bake it? like throw it in the oven? lol I have heard this before, maybe for video cards?
Click to expand...

lol, dont EVER bake a HDD.

The trick is to put it in an anti static bag, remove as much air as possible and stick it in the freezer for as long as you can stand. One hour at least. This will bring it back for roughly 20 minutes, just enough time to get any important files from it.

I do this from time to time if an executive director has a HDD die.
 
I tried the freezer trick, but windows doesn't even recognize it as a hard drive.😕

Keeps either installing inito driver, or if I use my WD external drive device it installs VSO amd64 drivers.
 
Another trick that sometimes works if you have a stuck platter is to grab hold of the drive and snap-rotate it, as if you were throwing a frisbee. Don't let go, though. 🙂
 
Shaft seizure, burnt motor winding, burnt motor or head positioner chip, inability to read servo. I doubt platter-head stiction since laptop drives have long been equipped with head lift mechanisms. Shafts can seize if the drive is dropped or warped, but if the motor spins, even briefly, the shaft isn't seized.
 
Smoblikat said:
lol, dont EVER bake a HDD.

The trick is to put it in an anti static bag, remove as much air as possible and stick it in the freezer for as long as you can stand. One hour at least. This will bring it back for roughly 20 minutes, just enough time to get any important files from it.

I do this from time to time if an executive director has a HDD die.
Click to expand...
Yup, I've done this. Do not use SpinRite, it's not likely to revive it. You have a small window of time to copy important data and if (or when) the head crashes it could do it so violently that you may not have another chance to get the data off.

Since Windows is not recognizing it, you might try booting into Hiren BootCD and trying a recovery utility there.
 
Update...I was unable to be successful with the freezer trick. I did however get much closer. I bought the same used working hard drive and swapped the circuit board on the bottom. The drive spins up and drivers install in windows. Just don't see any drive come up. Maybe different bios or something on the board? Either way it has somewhat came back to life.
 
DON'T WRITE ANYTHING TO THE HD... read only.

People are sometimes able to recover data using a Knoppix LiveCD.
Life Hacker instructions HERE
 
peteyo said:
Update...I was unable to be successful with the freezer trick. I did however get much closer. I bought the same used working hard drive and swapped the circuit board on the bottom. The drive spins up and drivers install in windows. Just don't see any drive come up. Maybe different bios or something on the board? Either way it has somewhat came back to life.
Click to expand...

Start the PC with the problem hard drive connected and then put the PC to sleep. Whilst the PC is in sleep mode swap over the circuit board. When the PC wakes up you “may” be lucky and able to read from the drive.
 
I have used.
Flipping the drive over to its back or standing on its side. *1
Freezing.
The rotate snap. *1
The tap.
The open and rotate manual. *1
The replace the board.
The move the platters to another drive. *1
Various softwares, Been so long none come to mind anymore, Except a one time lucky recovery I used DOS to Fdisk a 20Meg partition and then use photo rescue in windoz, (Fdisk let the drive mount in windoze)

And finaly the slam it on the ground technique (Shockingly Its worked 2x) before the dumpster.

Notes.
*1 Spindle drives.
 
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