Resurrecting a dead SATA drive?

[Dougmeister]

Computer had powered off during the night last week. Upon powering up, it said it couldn't find the boot drive, insert a disk, etc.

I pulled the drive, put in a spare, installed Windows 7 on the spare, turned the computer off, hooked up the 'dead' drive on a 2nd SATA cable, and started it back up. The bad drive spins up, not sure if it was identified in the BIOS or not, but Windows Disk Manager doesn't even see it.

I tried the "freezer" trick, but that didn't work.

Any other ideas?

I thought about booting a Linux CD, but I'm not that familiar with Linux or the associated tools.

Thanks.

Edit: I also read about "putting an EXACT logic board in place of the suspected dead one" but haven't had time to look into buying one off of eBay.

Also thought about data recovery software such as "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard". Any others?

 

[heymrdj]

Computer had powered off during the night last week. Upon powering up, it said it couldn't find the boot drive, insert a disk, etc.

I pulled the drive, put in a spare, installed Windows 7 on the spare, turned the computer off, hooked up the 'dead' drive on a 2nd SATA cable, and started it back up. The bad drive spins up, not sure if it was identified in the BIOS or not, but Windows Disk Manager doesn't even see it.

I tried the "freezer" trick, but that didn't work.

Any other ideas?

I thought about booting a Linux CD, but I'm not that familiar with Linux or the associated tools.

Thanks.

Edit: I also read about "putting an EXACT logic board in place of the suspected dead one" but haven't had time to look into buying one off of eBay.

Also thought about data recovery software such as "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard". Any others?

Did you check the BIOS settings? See if the drive is seen and see if it shows up for boot.

A server of mine using a Biostar T-7025 board is finicky after a power outage. It remembers all of its settings, but the hard drive (SATA 3) that holds the OS loses its boot status (it changes to SATA 1) and then the system says it can't get a boot device. I have to go change it manually.

 

[Dougmeister]

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked in the BIOS last night and it still doesn't even show up.

Am I correct in stating that if the computer/BIOS doesn't even see it, that NO software (Windows, Linux, booting off a floppy, etc.) will be able to recover any data since it won't even be able to GET to the disk?

 

[pete1229]

Just a thought, can you mount the bad drive in an external enclosure and run a chkdsk /f on it? Usually on those external enclosures you'll have the choice of either a sata or usb connection from the encl. to your PC, opt for the usb connection seeing how your having sata connect detection problems. Also contact the manufacturer's website, I know from experience Western Digital for example has some pretty good recovery tools you can download for free, I do believe however they are proprietary to their hardware but I would imagine most manufacturers offer similar software.

 

[corkyg]

The suddenness of the failure suggests that one of the components on the drive electronics circuit board failed. If that is the case, the board replacement might work.

 

[pete1229]

What are the specs, mobo? cpu? etc.