Hard Drive Failure? Any suggestions?

[choli00090]

Hi Everyone.. Over the weekend, the computer my wife & child use to display some boot error message. So a couple of days ago I pulled out the drive to figure out what was going on. So I connected to my machine thru usb & the drive detected fine thru vista & showed the file type as being Raw, but acted like there was nothing on the drive.

Ok No big deal, I've had this problem before, & usually what I do is delete the partition & recreate it, format & then use software recovery software to find & recover the files.. However not this time.

Windows Disc Management kept giving me some I/O Error message (can't remember at the moment) in regards of trying to delete the partion or convert to "basic" (or dyamic).

The last thing I tried was putting the drive back into the computer & was going to try doing a windows reinstall. However when it came for the drive Selection, it said there was no drive (even though the CMOS detected the drive with no issues)

So my question is, is there anytype of software I can try that would help give life to the drive so I can attempt to recover some of the files that was on the drive. I did have the documents, bookmarks, pics backed up from it, but had some big video files also.

Thanks

 

[elconejito]

Usually the manufacturer has some testing tools. WD for example does a quick check, extended check and write zeroes.

However, if you've already got the data off of it, I would consider the drive "lost" and RMA if it's still in warranty. If it's not in warranty, they make great paper weights

EDIT: the purpose of the tests is to make sure the drive hasn't completely failed. If the tests are OK, the write zeroes may just clear out the drive if there was a bad sector that was preventing setup from seeing the drive.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: choli00090
Over the weekend, the computer my wife & child use to display some boot error message.

Windows Disc Management kept giving me some I/O Error message (can't remember at the moment) in regards of trying to delete the partion or convert to "basic" (or dyamic).

Keep a pad and pencil by the PC and write down the error messages that are displayed.