Hard drive death

[HTRednek]

I know the answer to this question, bbuuuttttt. I have a client with a small business and his old IBM pentium II seems to have bit the dust. The old 2 gig hard drive is giving me the familair clak, clak, clak when it trieds to spin up. He really needs the data off the drive. Is there any alternative to sending it to a drive repair service?? Bios won't recognise the drive and it never spins all the way up. any ideas are appreciated. Also what drive recovery places are reputable and won't charge him $5000 to get back a couple of Megs of peachtree data. Thanks in advance.

 

[microAmp]

Can't help you on the software retrevial part of it, but you could get a rubber head hammer, hit it slightly on the side of the HDD.

It could work, I've heard success stories on that working and other stories saying that doens't work anymore, but if it des work itwould help the bearing on the motor for one final spin up on the HDD. Worth a shot before spending large amount of money on the other route.

Also have a second HDD already formatted and ready to go if the broken HDD to transfer the data, Norton Ghost, I believe can make an exact copy of one HDD to another.

Don't shut off the computer or anything if the bad HDD actually gets going.

 

[starwarsdad]

I have heard from several reputable sources that freezing the drive will give you some extra life.

Myself, I worry about condensation, but my boss swears it will work.

I have seen the same advice given by others here.

Good Luck!

 

[jarsoffart]

Ontrack has software and in-lab services. I had an IBM 60GXP stop working and it would make that sound that it was trying to access something repeatedly when the system was booting. The BIOS couldn't recognize the drive's parameters either. I bought the Ontrack EasyRecovery software and put the damaged drive as a slave drive on a working system and started the recovery process. It took 40 some hours to scan the whole drive, but eventually I was able to recover my data. I then tried to reformat the drive and install Windows 2000 and it wouldn't work so my conclusion is that EasyRecovery software is pretty amazing.

 

[KingofFah]

I have heard tons of freezing stories of success; tell him to give it a try. I heard that it usually lasts only a few mins. So he better do what he has to do fast, if it works.