JaSSon Posted September 11, 2006 Report Share Posted September 11, 2006 A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his dead harddrive to see if any files off it could be saved. The hard drive is a Maxtor 160GB ATA-133 drive. I have had drives fail before, and if I didn't try to boot off them, I could still access and copy the files off them. This drive is giving me more trouble. I can hear the drive spin up, but then it begins making a horrible noise. It's almost like a beeping, which I can only assume is the head bouncing off the spinning plates. I've tried plugging it into one of my IDE ports, but I can't get anything other than noise out of it. Windows won't even recognize that it is there. It's not listed in the device manager either. Is there any software I can use to try to access the drive? Is there someplace local they can take it to have the data extracted? Dell is coming Friday to do a warranty repair, so the clock is ticking. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally Pat Posted September 11, 2006 Report Share Posted September 11, 2006 Put it in the freezer for 2 or 3 hours, then try again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackson1647545504 Posted September 11, 2006 Report Share Posted September 11, 2006 Put it in the freezer for 2 or 3 hours, then try again. What he said ... any be quick about things when it spins back up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thorne Posted September 11, 2006 Report Share Posted September 11, 2006 Put it in the freezer for 2 or 3 hours, then try again. HELL FUCKING KNOW proved to be a non working solution, Most times will cause more problems Your best bet if it detect in the bios is the boot up off a knopx disk and see if you can mount it. If that does not work and he does not want to pay 3 g plus for data recovery service take the drive and with a a height of about 6 inches drup it flat with the circuit board side down, This is a proven solution and will sometimes knock the heads up enough /bend them to make it work again. this might work. If the drive does not detect in bios you may just be screwed because the drive wont spin up enough to do it and if you really wanna try the freezer method Put it in a ziplock with 0 condesnation Condensation with pwn the board Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmrmnhrm Posted September 11, 2006 Report Share Posted September 11, 2006 Yes, the ZipLock bag is very important to the freezer. If you can pull a vacuum (even with a straw) before sealing it, even better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragknee66 Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 +1 zip lock bag and in freezer. I have managed to save just 1 before like this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supplicium Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 dont put it in a freezer. download knoppix linux, boot it up and copy your files to an external hard drive or network share. its easy and has a pretty gui. you newbs can even do it. if you cant figure it out click this: http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaSSon Posted September 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 I'm thinkin the drive is toast. Froze it over night and played with it in the morn. It didn't make any funny noises for a few minutes, but Windows still wouldn't see it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmrmnhrm Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 dont put it in a freezer. download knoppix linux, boot it up and copy your files to an external hard drive or network share. its easy and has a pretty gui. you newbs can even do it. if you cant figure it out click this: http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/ That assumes the drive even spins up and is visible to the BIOS, neither of which were true in this case. Knoppix (like SpinRite before it) is not the magic silver bullet of the dead hard drive world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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