Seeking opinion on hard drive

[meltdown75]

I have a Western Digital 30-gig drive here, taken from a client's Hewlett Packard system.

Original problem: system refuses to boot, hangs and says, "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM".

So, I boot into the recovery console and try a "chkdsk /r". chkdsk makes it to a little over 20% of the scan (takes about an hour) when it reports "The Volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems".

Hooking it up as a slave on my main system only causes the Windows bootup to hang.

Also, the drive makes some barely audible clicks when it is given power. It is visible in BIOS but I'm guessing that mechanically, this drive is dead.

Should I just tell the client that the drive is FUBAR and tell them that I can *attempt* to recover data by doing the freezer trick, or should I even bother? thanks.

 

[meltdown75]

*crickets*

 

[bamacre]

If your client will pay you for your time, it may be worth the effort. Otherwise, just tell him it's fubar, because it surely is.

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: bamacre
If your client will pay you for your time, it may be worth the effort. Otherwise, just tell him it's fubar, because it surely is.

thanks bam...

i agree and that's what i'll tell him.