please help. whats the best way to get info off a FUBARed hard drive?

[Aharami]

I think my secondary HD - a 120 gig Maxtor just died last night. I have the HD partiotioned into 3 logical drives - storage, games, and music. I was trying to install this game demo last night into the games drives when in the middle of the installation, the HD started making a LOUD clicking noise, followed by a spinning/whining noise - repeat.

I immediately powered the comp down and upon restarting, problem started again.
It seems like everything is fine until something/anything tries to access that drive.

-On startup, everything is fine until after windows startup screen - then the HD starts making the noise again and desktop doesnt show up. (tried it with Maxtor drive not connected and windows starts up fine)
-Tried to boot up thru winxp cd, and was fine when examining my master HD, but as soon as it started to examine my Maxtor HD, noise started and seemed like system froze.

So worst case scenario...if my Maxtor is FUBARed....how can i get some of the data off my Storage and Music partitions? are there any tools that might aid me?

thanks a lot

 

[nanaki333]

if the partitions are in tact, you can probably just put a new drive in and make it your primary master drive. install windows on that one and have the other drive as a slave. then just go to it and grab all your stuff off of it.

 

[Uncle Bob]

from the sound of it, your hd drive sounds like it's suffered a mechanical failure or head crash... not good.

ok, if you really want to try and get data off of it

1. you can try the drive again after it's been off for several hours - if it does come back on, get your data off there pronto!. This is the most optimistic senario, but then my glass is half full 😉

2. it doesn't sound like a controller fault (this would normally be where the drive doesn't get picked up by the bios) but if you could find another drive of the same make/model, you could try swapping the controller board.

3. if the drive is out of warranty (or you don't care about warranty), remove the drive from the machine and while holding it vertical with the thin edge towards you (i.e looking at the drive side-on) twist your hand quite quickly and forcefully whilst being careful not to drop the drive. what you are trying to do is spin the internal platters in the hope that this will free a stuck mechanism. this will break an internal shock sensor which is why your warranty will be voided by this technique.

4. send the drive off for expensive data recovery services

 

[sfgtwsac]

As Uncle Bob indicated, the dreaded clicking sound usually means the mechanical end of the drive.

Before you even consider powering up the drive again, ask yourself if your ok losing the data. If you are, follow Uncle Bob's advice. If you want to protect the data, which has probably not been corrupted, just leave the drive alone and start looking into data recovery services.

From your list of partitions, losing games or music doesn't sound like a huge deal. I don't know what you had in storage, so obviously I couldn't say if you should try to salvage it. One thing to keep in mind with data recovery services, the size of the drive is a factor in the pricing, which will be at least $300 dollars (last time I checked) just to examine the drive.

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: Uncle Bob
from the sound of it, your hd drive sounds like it's suffered a mechanical failure or head crash... not good.

ok, if you really want to try and get data off of it

1. you can try the drive again after it's been off for several hours - if it does come back on, get your data off there pronto!. This is the most optimistic senario, but then my glass is half full 😉

2. it doesn't sound like a controller fault (this would normally be where the drive doesn't get picked up by the bios) but if you could find another drive of the same make/model, you could try swapping the controller board.

3. if the drive is out of warranty (or you don't care about warranty), remove the drive from the machine and while holding it vertical with the thin edge towards you (i.e looking at the drive side-on) twist your hand quite quickly and forcefully whilst being careful not to drop the drive. what you are trying to do is spin the internal platters in the hope that this will free a stuck mechanism. this will break an internal shock sensor which is why your warranty will be voided by this technique.

4. send the drive off for expensive data recovery services

thanks!! I dont think its a controller fault either since BIOS recognizes it.
I think the HD is still under warranty but I care more about the data in it than getting it RMAed under warranty. As i understand, if i RMA it, they just send me a new drive and do nothing about the data in the bad one.
I will try suggestion 3 tonight.
I am even willing to try suggestion 4...given its under $500. I just called ontrack and the say the average price will be ~$1800 for my kind of problem

 

[montag451]

try one other thing -
put the drive in the freezer overnight.

When you connect it up in the morning - do whatever you have to do within a few minutes - if it works

 

[Gilby]

And no matter what, start backing up things that you care about at least semi-regularly. It took me frying the controller board on one of my hard drives to get me to first buy a CD-Writer and start doing backups. I looked into data recovery and saw it was way too expensive. I was able to recover the data myself with a new controller board, but I never want to have to worry about that again. If my HD were to go right now my reaction would be a slight curse for the lost pr0n, and a quick RMA to get a new drive that I can put my important documents (and emails and bookmarks and game saves) back onto from backup.