my HD is dead, somebody fix it :(

[ZippyDan]

WESTERN DIGITAL 120 GB HARD DRIVE SPECIAL EDITION 8 MB CACHE

IT IS DEAD

I READ THE 200 WAYS TO FIX A HARD DRIVE

BIOS WONT DETECT IT

BUT IT SOUNDS NORMAL, IT SPINS AND HUMS AND TEMPTS ME WITH ITS NORMALCY, ALL THE WHILE TORTURING ME WITHOLDING MY PRECIOUS DATA

((((((((((((

~Zippy!

 

[John]

Place it in a ziplock bag, then put it in the freezer for 20min. Pull it out and see if the bios will detect it so you can pull some data off. Hopefully you do regular data backups.

 

[ZippyDan]

ive tried the freezer...

10 mins
then 30 mins
then 3 hours
now im going to leave it in freezer overnight

no success so far

~Zippy!

 

[techfuzz]

Sounds like the controller board on the drive is toast, since the mechanical parts have not faultered. Not much you can do about that except maybe snag a working controller board off an exact same hard drive and try it.

techfuzz

 

[ZippyDan]

would a control board from a 120gb WD 2mb work on my 120gb WD SE 8mb?

also, is replacing the control board a risky process that will endanger the working drive? or is it fairly simple and harmless?

~Zippy!

 

[bendixG15]

When mine did exactly that, I went thru all the rituals,
including the midnight BIOS detect dance in the nude with a frog on my ear.
Final answer........t r a s h
Sorry, but then maybe you're a better dancer.

 

[Budman]

RMA time

 

[ZippyDan]

i already got an RMA, but there is data on the drive i REALLY want and i didnt backup ((

~Zippy!

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: ZippyDan
WESTERN DIGITAL 120 GB HARD DRIVE SPECIAL EDITION 8 MB CACHE

IT IS DEAD

I READ THE 200 WAYS TO FIX A HARD DRIVE

BIOS WONT DETECT IT

BUT IT SOUNDS NORMAL, IT SPINS AND HUMS AND TEMPTS ME WITH ITS NORMALCY, ALL THE WHILE TORTURING ME WITHOLDING MY PRECIOUS DATA

((((((((((((

~Zippy!

I think it is the HDD gods telling you to stop posting in ALL CAPS!!

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: ZippyDan
would a control board from a 120gb WD 2mb work on my 120gb WD SE 8mb?

also, is replacing the control board a risky process that will endanger the working drive? or is it fairly simple and harmless?

~Zippy!

I would have to venture a guess that those two boards are interchangable with the actual drive itself, the only difference being the amount of cache on the controller board (8MB vs. 2MB).

I cannot say anything about it endangering the working drive. Assuming you handle the board with care, take the necessary precautions, all you should need to do is unplug the controllers from their drives and swap in the working controller. Seems fairly simple to me, but I don't know about harmless. I have never done something like this before! Typical Warning: I take no responsibility for broken or mangled hardware should you decide to follow my suggestion nor any lost data that could result!

techfuzz

 

[Woody419]

Is the drive formated in FAT32 or NFTS? If the former try this. If the latter, you are sol.

 

[ZippyDan]

i just took the controller board off with EXTREME EASE. it just has four screws with pentagon shaped bits (which i just HAPPENED to have perfecting fitting screw driver in my drawer with a whopping selection of 4 different screw drivers), and then it falls right off

i am wondering what would happen if u used a controller board from another WD drive, i have several 40gb drives and a 100gb drive (all 2MB) that appear to be the exact same controller board...

~Zippy!

 

[ZippyDan]

yes its fat32. so far lost and found has at least been able to DETECT the drive, which is more than my bios could do, but the type of the drive seems all corrupted (instead of "WD120JB-LTBLAHBLAH" its "W(-*@sadk=33"), the size of the drive shows as 18GB instead of 120GB, and of 1300 sectors read so far, only 70 are readable. plus master boot record and other stuff is unreadable, this program keeps giving me errors everytime it tries to do something

also, it says it will take 66 days to finish scanning

edit: ooo now its read 850 of 2000 sectors. in fact, its reading all the sectors except the first 1250 which it mostly failed on

let me guess, the first 1250 sectors are the boot sectors?

but now it says it will take 170 days to finish scanning. half a year

~Zippy!

 

[zephyrprime]

Try a different cable. It's a long shot but worth a shot. I also think your HD is probably recoverable if you use a different controller board.

 

[ZippyDan]

ive tried 3 different cables

i dont have another 120gb hd to use. im wondering what will happen if i use a controller card from a 40gb WD that looks identical (2mb). are controller cards hard-coded to use a 40gb HD for instance? im pretty sure that WD uses the same controller card, physically speaking, for all 2mb drives... but maybe the cards have a bios of sorts that means they are only set to work with a 40gb?

~Zippy!

 

[ZippyDan]

no logic board experts?

this lost and found thing seems like its ALMOST working, working a lot better than anything else ive tried, but why cant it just repair the boot sector (if that is as i am assuming, the sector that is damage), as some other program i saw advertised it could, but didnt. edit: nm read the faq and it says it only performs read operations, no attempt to repair

also, why does it have to take so long scanning... i want to skip the scanning and get to the copying, but scanning seems to be the only thing i can do with it...

also, it detects my WD 100gb drive in the same computer fine, but it wont let me use that as the destination disk to copy the files to! why! edit: figured it out, have to use a boot disk that supports fat32 and assigns drive letters... used an old WinME startup disk

my 100gb drive is primary master, and my broken 120gb is secondary master

~Zippy!

 

[Woody419]

How about e-mailing Powerquest tech support with your Lost & Found questions? At worst all they can say in no, at best you might get help from the experts.

 

[zephyrprime]

I know that IBM drives are programmed with the capacity of the drive. So I don't think using a controller board from a different hard drive is a safe thing to do even if the boards are identical. I would buy another drive of the same sort. Maybe from ebay. Got to try to get the exact same model. If it works, great. If it doesn't, bummer. Either way, you'll probably be able to just resell the spare parts drive drive again after you're done with it.

 

[ZippyDan]

why hasnt someone come up with a way to flash firmware of hard drive logic boards

~Zippy!

 

[ZippyDan]

why hasnt someone come up with a way to flash firmware of hard drive logic boards

~Zippy!

 

[sharkeeper]

why hasnt someone come up with a way to flash firmware of hard drive logic boards

You can. Get a SCSI drive!

SCSI disks can also be programmed for optimised R/W patterns, multisegmented buffering, etc.

Getting back to the original sqwawk...

Doing a PCB swap is without too much risk. Make sure the PCB is from the same IDENTICAL model drive; i.e. 1200JB! If possible, match DCM. FW should match but is not critical. NEVER, EVER use a pcb from a different model drive!!! (even a 1200BB) You will be sad if you do...

-DAK-

 

[Insidious]

Originally posted by: ZippyDan
i already got an RMA, but there is data on the drive i REALLY want and i didnt backup ((

~Zippy!

They never learn

 

[ZippyDan]

hey hey! ive never had a hard drive fail on me before! AND i had just isolated and moved all the stuff i wanted to backup to drive F: about 2 months ago, in preparation to backup... but i kept putting it off

also, i want to know what happens if u use the wrong control board with a hard drive! not just "u will be sad"

~Zippy!

 

[ZippyDan]

well the time flies at my house! down to 4 days to scan and no unreadable sectors!!

~Zippy!

 

[extro]

this lost and found thing seems like its ALMOST working, working a lot better than anything else ive tried, but why cant it just repair the boot sector (if that is as i am assuming, the sector that is damage),


It's not the boot sector if the drive is reporting that it's the wrong model. It's the electronics. I've had that happen with a WD.