Confirm my suspicions

peetee · 8 Mar 2008 at 11:55

WD cavier 250 sataII isnt recognising in windows, but it does in bios, it had started making odd noises and then once you could hear it spin up.. click click down.. up click click down.. im assuming its a mechanical fault but the circuitboard is still fine hence why it shows in bios?
Any way I can get it back and running or programs I can use to try and get my data back off it.. think its under a 3yr warranty sooooo

Thnks

semi-pro waster · 8 Mar 2008 at 12:07

Probably my initial step would be to try and recover the data before doing anything else, it might be worth trying it in a mates machine to see if that will allow you to recover the data.

If/when you do that then I'd run WD Tools or whatever they call their diagnostics software and see if it recognises a fault with the drive, you frequently need that for an RMA anyway when the drive is partially working.

peetee · 8 Mar 2008 at 12:21

thanks, ill open up the pc later and pull the other drives out and plug it into another port first, then ill have a blast on my flatmates, WD Tools a dos program then?

semi-pro waster · 8 Mar 2008 at 12:26

WD's software is called Data Lifeguard but rather usefully it appears to only support EIDE drives, you could however look around to see if there is anything more helpful there or even just at the RMA options.

Pulseammo · 8 Mar 2008 at 15:09

When you say "isn't recognising in windows" does that mean it doesn't see it in my computer or in the disk manager. If it doesn't see it in my computer, it doesn't mean that it isn't there, it just means it is unformatted.

If it was previously formatted to some given file system, and has suddenly disappeared then your partition table likely corrupted. (due to mechanical failure, a bad write, or some other problem).

Right click my computer, click manage, then disk management in the left pane. If it shows there, it's just no longer formatted.

peetee · 8 Mar 2008 at 15:55

ok constructive, no its not in disk management

!