Damaged Hard Disk Data Recovery

dancin

Hi All,
My computer system died on me last night. Powered it up and it basically siad that it was missing it's hard disk. Swapped in a spare disk and it booted up fine. So my main HD has gone south :-(

Unfortunately there is some stuff on it that I need (added since my last backup).

Can anyone recommend somewhere I can go to get the data recovered from the disk?

Ideally in the dublin area, so I can save time by not having to post it there and back again.

okee

What happens when you start the computer, does the HD power up ?
Give a clicking noise ? . Sometimes wrapping it in a freezer
bag and putting it in the freezer for a few hours can get it up
and running long enough to retrieve the data depending on the fault
I've managed to get data off a disk like this before

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6255-5029761-2.html

okee

Khannie

Is it a dell? Dell mobo's are a bit picky when it comes to recognising hdd's. I was able to take a broken drive out of a dell and stick it in my own machine to read stuff off it.

dancin

Yep, it's a Dell. I've tried putting it into an old Compaq with the same result.

I'll try putting it into my new(ish) home brew system tonight, and see what happens.

When the system starts up, the drive spins up (sort of very quiet jet engine whine). The machine reports that there is no drive on Device 0. A trip into the BIOS show's that the system doesn't see a drive connected at all.

If the move into my system doesn't work, I'll try freezing it :-) Sounds nuts, but then again it's a million to one shot, so it just might work...

Thanks for the advice.

Capt'n Midnight

Excluding bad batches you can expect about 3% of hard drives to die each year. Also because the lubricating oil evaporates you can take 5 years as the maximum safe life for a drive. - to others reading this - when was your last backup.

If the motherboard on the drive dies then swapping another motherboard from the same model of the same revision might work if you are lucky and dance anticlockwise around the kitchen table naked at the first full moon after lunasa while wearing a chicken.

If the head has crashed then swapping the motherboard won't help since the trashing of the drive probably burnt it out. For this and all mechanical faults in the drive motor and head etc. the only way to recover data is to send off the drive to a place where they remove the platters (disks) and dump the rest of the drive and read the raw data off the platters, but the cost is from several hundred upwards..

Check the jumpers on the drive and try it in different orientations horizontal / vertical / on end but if the BIOS don't see it, the outlook is not good.

Kevin_rc_ie

5 years maximum? Be afraid be very afraid. On a slightly different note, assuming your harddrive isnt broken but the data has been reformatted. Is there a good free or shareware program that i can use as a once of to recover data?