hard drive just up and died?

[archninja]

i pulled a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 250GB 7200rpm ATA133 hard drive from a system...put it on a desk...put it in another system about 2 feet away, connected the IDE cable, and the power cable.

first computer has Windows XP with SP1, nForce2 mobo. second has Windows XP, no service packs, and some very old/dated PC Chips board with VIA chipset.

i boot up and it recognizes the drive, but wants to CHKDISK it, i skip it, get into explorer and most of the files are inaccessible, its listing them as corrupt. i just don't understand. it was working fine, and i shut down the other system properly. i ground myself by touching the metal case whenever i do anything...i tried unplugging the CD-RW to see if it was a power issue, and tried another IDE port, cable, etc. and no dice.

i'm completely stumped, i had like 200gb of my data on this drive. i'm hoping it suddenly starts working properly when i reassemble my new system next week (nForce4 SLI motherboard). any ideas whats going on?

 

[Rashkae]

My condolences. Maxtors die like flies. Here in Singapore we already call them "Maxtorture".

Hope it miraculously works when you hook it up to your new rig, but to be honest my optimism is pretty low...

 

[archninja]

is there anything i can do, or can i send it to one of those places for data recovery? how much does that cost?

 

[amdskip]

Did you try hooking it up to the system you removed it from? Data recovery is very costly.

 

[archninja]

that system is gone. i'm going to try it in my new system, otherwise perhaps a freeware ntfs file recovery tool, then maybe data recovery :

do western digital drives fail like this?

 

[archninja]

anyone know anything about programs like this:

http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

 

[tyborg]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

BEFORE YOU USE ANY RECOVERY/REPAIR PROGRAMS, ESPECIALLY PARTION REPAIR UTILITIES, CLONE THE HARDDRIVE TO ANOTHER ONE IN CASE IT SCRAMBLES IT BEYOND RECOVERY!!!

that happened to a customer of ours. his neighbor downloaded a filesystem repair utility because he had some corrupt files, now his whole drive has been rendered completely unrecoverable. Go get a harddrive cloning utility and clone it to another hdd before you do ANYTHING. remember, the more you mess with the drive, the more messed up stuff can get. it sounds to me like either an unlocked overclock, or motors stalling or something to cause bad corruption.

anyway, clone the drive, use freeware utilities on the drive if you want, that way if anything gets extra-screwy, you have a complete backup. For professional data recovery, I can't speak for any company but the one I work for, but we charge anywhere between $100-300~, based on whether or not the drive can be read by windows or if we have to use a dos-based utility or what. If the drive dies completely, BIOS doesn't detect it or it doesnt spin, it can cost upwards of $1000 to be worked on in a cleanroom environment (where we take the drive apart). As for Western Digital drives, I can't speak for newer drives, but I have a WD400 in my machine that's about 4 years old and still going strong. I've heard nothing but good things lately about Seagate drives though.

To recap, clone the drive before you mess with it, professional data recovery can be kind of pricy and may not even get the data 100%. This is why it pays off to back up your stuff. Data recovery is a volatile business where barely anything is guaranteed to go right.

Sorry I don't have a better answer for you. if you want to try some freeware utilities, you might try some of the stuff at http://ubcd.sourceforge.net. I don't know if there's much there that'll be what you're looking for, but it's worth a look-see. Good luck, man.

BTW, I generally steer clear of maxtors. they run too hot for comfort.

 

[wpshooter]

I don't think there is anything wrong with your drive!!!

I think the only problem is that you have moved onto another computer on which it's installed operating system is not currently compatible.

You just need to add it onto a system as a slave drive instead of a master/operating system drive. And then get what files you may need off of it.

Good luck.