Main hard disk failed, need some urgent help

vygec

vygec

vygec

Associate
Joined
24 Sep 2003
Posts
455
Location
East London
Last night i came back to see a STOP Check error on my PC Monitor (BSOD)
Restarted the PC, to find 'Disk Boot Failure' appear.

The disk is a WD5000AAKS model. Checked the BIOS, and the drive is now not listed. I have a secondary 500gb disk, and this is showing fine. The main disk has the OS and all my important data.

I have changed cables on the mainboard connecting the disk, with no change. I tried connecting this disk on a laptop using a usb/sata caddy, and Windows did not recognise the drive either.

When starting up, the drive spins up for a few seconds and then spins down without any further activity.

Im dreading the worst, but is there anything else i can try to at least retrieve the data on this disk?
 
Depends what caused the issue. I've heard talk about sticking the hard drive in a sealed zip lock bag and putting it in the freezer overnight, which can squeeze about an hour or so of life out of it. But odds of it working? Depends what caused your drive to fail. If it was an electronic failure, you may be able to 'simply' replace the PCB, and the freezer trick would do nothing at all.
 
can try a cmos clear,battery out for 30 minutes then try

it will reset any oc/bios settings so beware,sometimes a bad crash will cause you to have missing hdd due to corrupted cmos

if it still doesn't show up then lookslike hdd failure
 
Tried the CMOS clear, with no luck.
I have checked the PCB, and there are no signs of anything being blown.

Reluctantly i may have to give the freezer trick a try.

Can anyone suggest any data retrieval companies that dont cost the earth?!
 
Data recovery is expensive no matter what unfortunately, the best way to prevent this kind of thing happening is backups... Someone is going to say it and it might as well be me :) I hope it was nothing vital, otherwise your only choice is data retrieval really (other than trying another PCB but that is hit and miss).
 
If you need to retrieve the data you will need to pay a specialist a couple of hundred quit with ABSOLUTELY no guarantee you will recover any data. Recovery services are expensive as your hdd will have to go into a clean room environment.

With free services like Dropbox and hdd's being so cheap there is no excuse for not making a backup of your important data, so lesson learned.
 
As mentioned earlier, backups. I think we've all done it.... thought it would never happen, but then it did. Backup important data !

That obviously doesn't help you at the moment. I`ve never tried this, but it might just work. If you can lay your hands on an identical drive, you could swap the controller board. If the fault is on the controller board (it stands a decent chance), you may well find that your drive comes back to life and you can access your data.

Well, it's an idea !
 
Freezer trick worked for me with an IBM Deskstar a few years back that wouldn't spin up fully. Used to get 15-20 minutes before it borked again. A couple of goes and I got all the data I needed off.

It really is a bit of a last resort trick, and could invalidate any warranty on the drive.

Oh and BACKUP YOUR DATA. I can guarantee you won't make the same mistake again!
 
I nearly had the same problem as you and as we speak I'm currently filling my 25GB skydrive with all my home movies and photos
 
Also, if you can get the drive to spin up and your machine recognises it but you can't access the data, there are a few utilities available that can recover data from corrupted drives (not always, but worth a go). I had a WD drive fail once, and managed to rescue the important (Open University coursework) files that I needed to submit within a couple of days. Can't remember the name of the utility, but it was free and it did the trick.

Yes, that taught me the "backup" lesson !
 
Thanks for all your tips guys, but i need to reiterate that BIOS is not recognising the drive, as such i would have thought any utility is not going to find the drive?
 
vygec said:
Thanks for all your tips guys, but i need to reiterate that BIOS is not recognising the drive, as such i would have thought any utility is not going to find the drive?
Click to expand...

I did state " if you can get the drive to spin up and your machine recognises it but you can't access the data".

I'd not heard about the "freezer trick" before, so I think that's worth a try. You may find that it get's the drive to spin up, but there's a chance that your data may not be accessable. That's where a data recovery app may come in useful. The only problem with that might be that you drive will not stay "alive" for long enough to allow the app to scan for recoverable files.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom