How to determine whether a HDD is dead?

[Cody]

I have two scrapped harddisk in the garage then one day I bought a external
3.5" HDD casing and put 'em on...2G IBM was quiet and the casing's LED is
green, so can I read all the files from the disk...8G IBM gave me a
screatching
noise, the LED was amber and I couldn't see it in the file manager... Can I
proclaim
the 8G officially dead?

Thanks.
Cody

 

[Devang Devani]

Try putting the 8Gb drive in your computer as a secondary to your master
hard drive and see if it is recognized ... if it doesn't then assume the
worse.

 

[NF]

I sometime slap problematic drives in an old box, and boot up with a Knoppix
cd, if that can see the drive, it might be useful (but not too dependable!)

 

[ur_droll]

: I have two scrapped harddisk in the garage then one day I bought a
external
: 3.5" HDD casing and put 'em on...2G IBM was quiet and the casing's LED is
: green, so can I read all the files from the disk...8G IBM gave me a
: screatching
: noise, the LED was amber and I couldn't see it in the file manager... Can
I
: proclaim
: the 8G officially dead?
:


Stick a heavy duty industrial magnet on it and see if it's magnetic