hdd failure, can i recover it?

GeX · 9 Apr 2007 at 19:43

hi.

main drive in my system has just died, 200gb sata drive - i dont care about the drive, but the data on it. ive got backups of a lot of it, but some had been added before i'd done the backup run.

its a WD drive, and it spins up, clicks and then spins up again - repeat until power off.

any chance of me getting this drive going again using a control board from another drive the same, or is more likely the disk itself thats broken?

smids · 9 Apr 2007 at 23:25

Sounds a bit like the head motor is faulty/heads have become misaligned. Either way, little can be done to retrieve the data. Controller boards would normally mean that the drive just disappears or fails to power up entirely.

fatnbald · 10 Apr 2007 at 20:47

You could try putting it in an external hard drive case and connecting it to another windows box. It's worked for both myself (linux ext2 file system which was stopping my NAS box booting) and a mate of mine (XP main drive which wouldn't boot).
It's worth a try before you start dismantling the drive.

Richard Beer · 11 Apr 2007 at 03:48

wouldnt norton ghost be able to retrive the files? Funnily enough in my gamig clan i am part of one of our players is having the exact same porblem

MrScott · 11 Apr 2007 at 09:19

Could always try the freezer trick

. Never tried it myself but I have heard of it working quite well on mechanically naffed drives. Seal the drive in a plastic bag (to prevent condensation) and stick it in the freezer for 2 hours or so, then see if it'll spin up and try & rescue your data before it warms up. I think it works best on distorted platters etc but it's definitely worth a try.