dell hard drive

peter-pantslez

i have a dell dimension 3100 and the hard drive decide it was gonna commit suicide... i have been on to dell and they have sent me out a new on but i need to get the data of the old one, i have a lot of important stuff on it (i know i should have had i t backed up!)

i brought it in to a place and they could do nothing with it cause it wont power up and a mate of mine that knows about computers said the same thing.

does and one know how i can power it up or get the data off it. or know of a place that can do it for me???

yoyo

If its not powering up I dont think you can do much, you could try a PATA/SATA to usb adaptor but without the drive getting power that probably wouldn't be much use!

Nick

Mr Bloat

It's not impossible but very difficult. If you know someone with an identical system, it's possible that the controller board on their system's hard disk is the same as yours. You could take the board of the good hard disk and put it onto yours. I've done this a number of times but the drive has to be identical in every way! Even if it is identical, you have to convince the owner of that system to let you mess with the board of their hard disk. Make sure you back up everything on the good disk first and be prepared to shell out for a new disk for them if it all goes pear shaped.

Alternatively, there are a couple of companies that specialise in this kind of data recovery but they're not cheap. If the data is really important, it might be worth it.

http://www.datarecovery.ie

http://www.criticaldata.ie

I have never used the services of either of these companies so I can't comment on how good/bad they are. My customers usually decide that the data isn't *that* important when faced with the costs of the data retrieval!

peter-pantslez

thats great mr bloat im gonna try swapping the boards first as its cheaper....i already have a sucker i mean person kind enough to lend me there hard drive:D finges crossed it matches

10-10-20

Does the disk make any funny noises when powering up? If so, it could be the motor or head... controller won't fix it.

Buy a similar drive on e-bay, update/downgrade the firmware on the DISK controller (ie the disk itself) to the same as what you were running (leave it alone if you aren't sure) and swap the controller over. It's what many of the data-recovery teams do...

peter-pantslez

no it doesnt any sounds at all!!!

10-10-20

Sounds like the drive controller alright - possibly a fuse.
Swap the onboard controller for a simiar type.

peter-pantslez

im picking up a harddirve the same as mine tonight so all things going well i should have it swapped and fingers crossed working tomorrow....