Hard Drive F.U.B.A.R

Guru Maith Agut

Whats the chances of being able to rescue anything off my HD thats just ceased working? Its definitely de HD as I've tried it in another pc and it doesn't start up (even after setting it to the appropriate slave/master config.). Not so worried about all the rubbish that on it but have some important work docs that I badly need... Now I need to go to shop for new one
I wonder do Argos do them cos they're open today in the sticks here.

Villain

Does the hard drive spin at all??

If it does you could connect it as a slave and use some recovery software, google will give you loads of options. If it doesn't you will have to send it away to a company like Ontrack and it will cost between €1000 and €3000 to get your data back.

Guru Maith Agut

irish1 wrote:

Does the hard drive spin at all??

No it doesn't spin at all.. €1000 - €3000?? :eek: Holy God!!!!

Villain

Well they only charge you €150 to look at the drive and tell you what can be recovered and tell you how much it will cost.

So you still need those files

the_syco

Just to make sure: when you plug it into a power source, does it make any noise? Even just a quick spin?

As for retrival, I've gone through a few drives, and once the drive can spin, I've been able to get my documents off it (even if Windows can't see it).

Guru Maith Agut

Ok here's the full story.

Last night at around ten-ish I left the computer ticking away on some DivX to DVD conversions, using DivXtoDVD on the second lowest speed setting so I wasn't taxing it. When I came back in a couple of hours later the moniter looked to be on standby so I moved the mouse to bring it out and nothing happened. So I turned the monitor off and on again and when it started up it showed me the "No Signal Input" message as though the pc wasn't on.

So I decided to simply reset the pc but the reset button did nothing! Then I tried the power button and it did nothing either. And then I noticed the hard drive wasn't spinning.

So I turned it off via the switch at the back of the tower unit and removed the extra hard drive and dvd drive and left just the hard drive in question and the one disk drive and rebooted, to no avail.

Having an extra system set up I tried it on that one, using just the hard drive in question on different jumper settings and while the monitor works, the system hangs during the IDE detection at the start of the bootup, wherever the hard drive should be found i.e. if i have it set to a master drive it hangs on primary master, if i have it as slave it hangs on slave etc.

It was far from the first time i've used DivXtoDVD, and nothing has been changed recently. I was connected to broadband all the time but firewalled well enough to never have had any problems.

Any ideas as to my course of action now?

Jnealon

My hard disk went a few weeks ago and I had a lot of important stuff on it. I tried all of the recovery utilities with no result. I ended up giving it to a company in Mullhuddart and they recovered it for me, cost €500. I was qouted as much as 3k by ontrack
Expensive lesson on the importance of backing up

leeroybrown

As Jnealon points out backing up is very important if you have important stuff on a hard drive. Hard driveshave lots of moving parts making them the most failure prone PC components.

Capt'n Midnight

Moral of the story - Backup is much cheaper than recovery.

Also HDD's aren't any more reliable than they have ever been due to constant cost cutting and preference for size over reliability. And bad batches still happen :mad:

the_syco

Guru Maith Agut wrote:

Last night at around ten-ish I left the computer ticking away on some DivX to DVD conversions

LOL:mad: Same thing happened to me. Same program, and all. Recovered all my data using Active@ File Recovery for Windows. I also couldn't start up my PC with it attached. So I had to use a USB enclosure (with the HDD in it), which I hooked up when Windows was running. After awhile, Windows saw it, and I was able to recover my stuff.

Willymuncher

Ooookay *uninstalls DivXtoDVD*

I know its not the program at fault...but when that happens to two different people, it makes me feel a little suspicious.

Adam

the_syco wrote:

LOL:mad: Same thing happened to me. Same program, and all. Recovered all my data using Active@ File Recovery for Windows. I also couldn't start up my PC with it attached. So I had to use a USB enclosure (with the HDD in it), which I hooked up when Windows was running. After awhile, Windows saw it, and I was able to recover my stuff.

Where did you get the USB enclosure, and was it expensive?

the_syco

Willymuncher wrote:

Ooookay *uninstalls DivXtoDVD*

I know its not the program at fault...but when that happens to two different people, it makes me feel a little suspicious.

Used it before, used it since. Once off problem. No idea why.

deckie27

you will get a usb enclosure in Maplins or peats. etc
prob 30-40 euro
Are you sure you had the jumpers correct when u put the drive into the second computer?
i've seeen it take 30 mins for a PC with a bum slave drive to boot
but when it did I was able to copy the data off it
I had another laptop drive which kept failing when copying data off it.
It used to creak and grown. In the end I gave it a sharp slap with a screw driver handle and to my shock I was able to copy everything off the drive. I filled it with crap and Format it a couple of times before the Dell engineer replaced it:p

Darwin

You might have some luck if you remove the HDD from the drive bay and stand it vertically. Alternatively, as a very last resort, put the drive in a zip lock bag and stick it in the freezer for an hour. When you remove it hook it up quickly and with a bit of luck it will spin up. Yes it sounds nuts, but it worked for me - long enough to get all my data off (keep the drive outside of your case as you don't want condensation drops hitting your motherboard...)

deckie27

Where abouts are you ??

$$$$

Guru Maith Agut

deckie27 wrote:

Where abouts are you ??

$$$$

Virginia, Cavan

deckie27

i'm only down the road,Navan I could help out
PM me if your interested.

Dec

Guru Maith Agut

deckie27 wrote:

i'm only down the road,Navan I could help out
PM me if your interested.

Dec

Cheers! I'll let you know shortly.

excal2

irish1 wrote:

Does the hard drive spin at all??

If it does you could connect it as a slave and use some recovery software, google will give you loads of options. If it doesn't you will have to send it away to a company like Ontrack and it will cost between €1000 and €3000 to get your data back.

Hey Irish1,

I used to use Ontrack too, and I was paying those rates too, feckers!!!

Now I use CDR, they're based in Mulhuddart and I think the last one I sent cost me 500 eur to recover...

Much better than those ontrack feckers!!!

Just thought I'd let ya know

Villain

Thanks for that excal2.

techi

Just a quick note guys if you can locate the same model hard drive and swap the controller board this can sometimes sort harddrive, have done this many times as I was in the game many moons ago.

Guru Maith Agut

techi wrote:

Just a quick note guys if you can locate the same model hard drive and swap the controller board this can sometimes sort harddrive, have done this many times as I was in the game many moons ago.

Cheers for that. I'll keep my eye out for one.