Please help with dying hard drive. Need to recover data.

[de8212]

Here's my setup.
Maxtor 80GB hard drive (master on ata 133 controller card). This drive contains my OS (winxp)
IBM 40 GB drive master on primary ide channel. Solely used for data.

My IBM drive is dead/dying. I cannot even boot with it connected to my pc. I have over 13 GB of pretty important data I NEED to get off of this drive. I have tried hooking it up as slave to the Maxtor but it still won't boot.
When the IBM is connected it freezes at the screen that says "Detecting IDE drives".
Please, please if you have any ideas on how I can get the data off of the IBM drive onto the maxtor let me know.
WIth all the IBM's dying a while back someone has to have some suggestions.

thanks in advance.
de

 

[dkozloski]

Put it in a Ziploc bag and place it in the freezer overnight. Take it out of the freezer an unzip the bag just enough to get the cables connected. Give it a try as master. It should work for at least a short while. This is no joke. I am as serious as a heartattack and I have had one of those.

 

[de8212]

I take it you are serious. Ok, so can I run it as master on the fist IDE channel while my main hard drive is connected to the ata 133 controller card? It has no OS on it, just audio, video, etc. I just need it long enough to get some files off of it.
Also, does anyone have a better time frame as to how long I can leave this thng in the freezer? I wouldn't be able to get to it till after work. Don't want to leave it too long.

Any other ideas before I try this one?

de

 

[fluxquantum]

Originally posted by: dkozloski
Put it in a Ziploc bag and place it in the freezer overnight. Take it out of the freezer an unzip the bag just enough to get the cables connected. Give it a try as master. It should work for at least a short while. This is no joke. I am as serious as a heartattack and I have had one of those.

wow. never heard of this method before. i guess if it works then go for it.

 

[dkozloski]

You can't leave it in the freezer too long. There are several threads on this board on this subject. One I recall had dozens of testimonials on this procedure. I believe the basis of the procedure is that the drive loses it's ability to do proper temperature compensation so you take the ambient temp to a new range.

 

[de8212]

Well I tried it this morning after leaving it in last night. Didn't work in my case. Anyone have any other ideas?

Has anyone tried any of the DAta recovery places I see online?

de

 

[dkozloski]

Plan on about $500/gig for data recovery.

 

[AMCRambler]

If you can get a new hard drive and load an OS up on that, then put the old drive in as a slave and see if you can access anything on it. However if the drive isn't still detected by your bios then you are out of luck as far as this goes. Where I work we've had to send a couple of drives out for data recovery that have crashed but had important info on them. We've been using a company called Reynolds Data Recovery. So far we've sent them 3 or 4 drives but only one of them they were able to recoverand it is very expensive(usually about $1500). If you are daring you could try doing the same thing they'd do. Get yourself another drive of the exact type, open the old one up and transfer the disk platters to the new one. I've never actually tried this but I have taken drives apart and they are fairly simple in their construction. I believe this is pretty much what they would do at a data recovery place. Anybody else ever try this? Might be worth looking into. I guess it would depend on how important that information was.

 

[AMCRambler]

Scratch that first thing I said. I didn't read your post closely and didn't realize you alredy had it running as a second drive with your OS booting off the 80gb.

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: AMCRambler
If you can get a new hard drive and load an OS up on that, then put the old drive in as a slave and see if you can access anything on it. However if the drive isn't still detected by your bios then you are out of luck as far as this goes. Where I work we've had to send a couple of drives out for data recovery that have crashed but had important info on them. We've been using a company called Reynolds Data Recovery. So far we've sent them 3 or 4 drives but only one of them they were able to recoverand it is very expensive(usually about $1500). If you are daring you could try doing the same thing they'd do. Get yourself another drive of the exact type, open the old one up and transfer the disk platters to the new one. I've never actually tried this but I have taken drives apart and they are fairly simple in their construction. I believe this is pretty much what they would do at a data recovery place. Anybody else ever try this? Might be worth looking into. I guess it would depend on how important that information was.

I am tempted to try it my friend.... but we need to remember that the swapping is done in an extremely clean environment..... even moisture can affect an exposed platter.....

 

[dkozloski]

You might get a drive identical to the one in question and swap out the circuit board.

 

[de8212]

I thought about getting a new drive and then swapping swapping the platters but IBM won't send the new drive until I get this one to them. I had a maxtor die a while back and they sent me the new one before so I could try and save some data. I used to be a die hard IBM fan but this policy is not doing me very good.

de

 

[alkemyst]

See if they will send you one if they charge you for it. Many companies stopped doing cross-ship because idiots used it to get two products then claimed the return was lost in the mail or whatever.

I have always had to pay for a new item so I can get an RMA faster (usually at least a week faster sometimes two).

The only bad part is usually the manufacturer charges inflated rates of at least MSRP (understandable), but sometimes 10-20% higher than that.

 

[de8212]

Plan on about $500/gig for data recovery.

I had over 13GB, so I guess data recovery would not be an option after all.
I guess I will just cut my losses and come up with a plan to back up my stuff in the future.

See if they will send you one if they charge you for it.

IBM guy said he couldn't do that.

de