Page 1 of dead HD

ok pc froze last night and when trying to reboot the hard dis ticks for a will then the pc tries to do a network boot, have stuck the HD in another pc as a slave drive still just makes a ticking noise and does nowt, question is......................is it worth opening the hd to see if I can get it to spin up once to retreave the data or is there a magic hardware hammer that will mahing spin long enough to back it up like I should have done before it failed

If you want to come after me you`ll find me in Newport Pagnell but be warned I know karate, Judo, Kung-fu and several other dangerous words

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still just makes a ticking noise and does nowt, question is......................is it worth opening the hd to see if I can get it to spin up once to retreave the data.

Don`t open the HDD under any circumstances, unless you have a really sterile clean area ie cleaner than a hospital (not saying much I know).

The drive is dead it is a ex drive it has ceased to be, its joined the choir eternal.

Now you could try this:

Put it into a sealable plastic bag & leave it in the freezer for 24 hours.
Extract it (making sure theres no ice\condensation on the electronic`s).
Very very swiftly, attach it as a slave drive to a PC, boot up with some Disc Cloning software & make a image\clone the drive as fast as you possibly can.

This has been known to work in the past with colleagues, but I have never tried it, mainly because I make regular backups. ;)



I quite like the Helpdesk people in a benevolent (as opposed to malevolent) way as they do some valuable work in preventing us being inundated by every halfwit who can work a phone.

This item was edited on Friday, 16th September 2005, 12:37

thanks I will set the jumpers to slave then freeze its assets and see if it lives long enough to get any stuff off of it. only reason for opening it is that many years ago I took that route and found that the disk was shorting out on start up without the lid on it ran for 2 hours which was enough to get the data the guy needed off of the disk. Stil I was saying that this weekend I was going to clear my hd up, I guess I did it the quick way

If you want to come after me you`ll find me in Newport Pagnell but be warned I know karate, Judo, Kung-fu and several other dangerous words

If you value your data highly I seriously do NOT recommend freezing the hard disc. Once you take it out of the freezer there will be condensation inside the hard disc. Manufacturers do specify allowable humidity levels in the specification of hard drives and freezing it will certainly cause humidity to go beyond the recommended level. This method may be well documented on Google searches but nobody has really given an explanation why freezing could cause it to work - I am sceptical. There are various recovery programs out there that you can try rather than freezing it.

Mind you the nasty clicking noise suggests that its not got bad sectors so much as bad hardware so he may have nothing to lose with the freezing tactic

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There are various recovery programs out there that you can try rather than freezing it.

hw do I use a recovery program on a disk that wont start up?

If you want to come after me you`ll find me in Newport Pagnell but be warned I know karate, Judo, Kung-fu and several other dangerous words

Is it by any chance an IBM Deskstar HDD??? If so, just do a Google search for `IBM Deathstar` to see all the horrors that have been caused by these really awful drives

Had a deskstar die on me(after 3 years mind), replaced it with a maxtor drive that died within the month so could be any brand really.
Anyway IBM sold their harddrive line to Hitachi and theres no reason beyond primitive supersition and a need for tradition to believe that their newer ranges suffer the same fault.

Remoh, Spinrite for example may do it as it works at the very lowest level, although professional disk recovery companies almost certainly can do it.

This item was edited on Sunday, 18th September 2005, 11:49

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Spinrite for example may do it as it works at the very lowest level, although professional disk recovery companies almost certainly can do it.

nothing will work on it as it wont boot at all new HD is currently in the machine and I am in the process of restoring backups that are too old and tracking down the stuff I lost that I hadn`t backed up, as someone with 20 yrs IT experience I got what I deserve for not taking regular backups.

thanks to this thread being bumped I have just remembered that I sealed it in a bag and put it in the freezer, I really must try to remember to take it out and stick it in the server to see if I can grab any data from it. As for using a professional restoration company I`m afraid the lost stuff isnt worth the cost. If the freezer dont work then its time to rip it open and see if it can be forced to spin

the new seagate 160gb seems to be working like a dream at the mo

thanks to all that have offered help

If you want to come after me you`ll find me in Newport Pagnell but be warned I know karate, Judo, Kung-fu and several other dangerous words