dead IDE hard drive

[Washoe]

I have a dead IDE hard disc drive. The system won't boot on this PC (I get message "Boot failure: System Halted"), and when I take out the hdd and hook it up on another PC as a slave it doesn't recognize any IDE drives at all. I tried booting from an XP setup CD, and the system will boot, however it gets to a point where it says it can't find any hard drives to install to! When attempting to boot either system, I hold this hdd in my hand and I dont detect any movement inside at all.

Anyway I'm convinced it is really dead. So what can I do now to get the data back?

 

[bacillus]

If the drive isn't recognised then most likely the electronics are shot. You could try substituting the circuitboard from another hard drive but barring that you'll need to send the drive to the data recovery service which will cost the bucks.

 

[xsilver]

2 options
1 -- data recovery software -- cant think of the links off the top of my head but I think the chances are slim here
2 -- data recovery services -- you will pay through the nose to have this done $50 an hour, I believe -- no guarantees either

you can google the 1st option and see if you can find some software that is free for you to test out first before laying out some cash
there have been stories however with hard drives being shot, blown up, dropped from tall buildings, acts of arson and still have data survive.... however if its not mission critical secret documents on the FBI + your pr0n collection .... you need to think before you drop the coin....

there is the third option which is -- have someone kick you in the loins for not making a backup

 

[gba]

Sounds llike the drive is shot to me, too... Have you tried booting up in DOS? If you have a Windows 98 boot disk, try runinng "scandisk" on it if the HD is recognized. Ofcourse, this won't work if the drive's NG.

I found these links to NTFS data recovery solutions, as well.

I hope you are able to get your info back somewhow...

 

[vegetation]

Same thing happened to me before. Basically, your drive is physically fine but the electronics that control the IDE drive are built on the drive itself and that is history, hence the system wont even recognize it.

Not much you can do aside from finding an identical used drive off ebay or something, but what a pain that will be. Otherwise, send in to a data recovery service if the data is worth the money ($$$). Chalk up the experience as remembering to backup your data on a constant basis.