Is my hard drive hopelessly dead?

vegetation

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2001
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My four year old 27gb drive suddenly stopped responding. I rebooted and the bios didn't even recognize it anymore. To eliminate an IDE control card issue I placed it in a different computer system and its bios too could not recognize it. The drive does spin up and doesn't make any weird noises -- just the bios doesn't know it's there. Jumper settings are all correct. Do I have any hope of getting this working again? I assume any hard drive recovery programs would be useless since the system doesn't even know the drive is there.
 

John

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
33,944
3
81
Place the HDD in a ziploc bag, then place it in the freezer for 30 min. Once you remove it from the freezer immediately connect it to your pc as a slave and try to pull the data off.
 

Abhi

Diamond Member
Sep 13, 2003
4,548
0
76
I hope you had a backup for the data on that drive...

coz otherwise u might need to pay a lotta $$$ for the recovery :(
 

Black88GTA

Diamond Member
Sep 9, 2003
3,430
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Maybe you could find an identical model on Ebay or someplace and swap the controller cards. It sounds like the controller card on the drive is the problem, since it's not making weird noises.

Good luck.
 

Sid59

Lifer
Sep 2, 2002
11,879
3
81
Originally posted by: Black88GTA
Maybe you could find an identical model on Ebay or someplace and swap the controller cards. It sounds like the controller card on the drive is the problem, since it's not making weird noises.

Good luck.

try that. if there's no click of death, the freezer trick wont do nothing but make it cold.
 

Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
23,643
3
81
I'm running a WD JB drive right now that locked up on me. It would boot up and load Windows after a shut down (drive cooled off). But after a few minutes it would hard lock again.
I did the freezer trick and it's still up and doing fine.
It's been well over six months now and no problems at all. :)

Try the freezer... It's cheap!


BTW, A few months ago I tried to get a friend's Quantum LM running that had the distinct "click of death". It wouldn't do anything but click.
I replaced it for him with a WD JB. A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning stuff out. I ran across a Quantum HD, but wasn't sure what it had on it. I tossed it in to find out.
And then, to my amazement... It was my friend's Quantum, but did no "clicking" and seemed to be operating just fine! :eek:
I formatted it and returned it to him.

 

Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
23,643
3
81
"what? you actually trust data to a revived hd?"

My WD JB... yes, totally
My friend's Quantum... I wouldn't, but that's up to him.
 

Slogun

Platinum Member
Jul 4, 2001
2,587
0
0
IF the freezer trick doesn't work, you might try stellar phoenix.

It's a data recovery program. The demo version allows you to find out whether it can access your drive and "see" your files.
In order to recover them, you have to buy the full version for about $100.
This program saved my butt a few weeks ago when I lost all my wife's data and 2 years of email when a hard drive's formatting became corrupted.
 

LouPoir

Lifer
Mar 17, 2000
11,201
126
106
Originally posted by: John
Place the HDD in a ziploc bag, then place it in the freezer for 30 min. Once you remove it from the freezer immediately connect it to your pc as a slave and try to pull the data off.



This actually works -