Failed Hard Drive

[Guest]

Hello,

We have a hard drive which has failed. Not sure if it's a mechanical
failure or some other problem. We've tried setting it as a slave to see if
we could recover any data. But when we try booting, a windows message states
that the slave hard drive is a failed drive. In the bios, the drive is not
recognized afterward.

My question is this: Rather than send the drive to a company which
specializes in data recovery, is there any good documentation available on
how to recover data off a mechanically failed hard drive ourselves?

Thanks very much in advance

 

[R. McCarty]

If it won't "Spin Up", there isn't anything you can do with it. There are
all kinds of drive failures (Electronics, Motor, Heads). If you power it,
can you place you hand on the drive and feel the gyroscopic effects ?

All Drive vendors provide a bootable diagnostic tool. However, if the
BIOS didn't detect the drive you won't be able to run the test on it. If
the data is critical, then the more steps you take to recover it yourself
may make the damage worse or even 100% unrecoverable. If you can
get the drive running - immediately take an image of the drive.

 

[Dave Patrick]

Very good advice.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| If it won't "Spin Up", there isn't anything you can do with it. There are
| all kinds of drive failures (Electronics, Motor, Heads). If you power it,
| can you place you hand on the drive and feel the gyroscopic effects ?
|
| All Drive vendors provide a bootable diagnostic tool. However, if the
| BIOS didn't detect the drive you won't be able to run the test on it. If
| the data is critical, then the more steps you take to recover it yourself
| may make the damage worse or even 100% unrecoverable. If you can
| get the drive running - immediately take an image of the drive.

 

[Guest]

If it is a mechanical failure (the drive is actually clicking for example...
most likely pointing to a crashed drive)... I have actually put the hard
drive in a zip lock bag in the freezer for 24 hours, reinstalled it (as a
slave drive). When the computer booted, I was able to see the drive and copy
the data to the boot drive or a network drive before it crashed again. Since,
it wasn't recognized even as a slave drive...it makes me think it is a
hardware problem.

Another possibility is that if it's a software (OS) problem you can try to
reinstall the operating system into the same windows folder (but don't
reformat the drive). This messes up your other programs, but if it does boot
up you may be able to copy your data over to another drive quickly. Be
careful taking this approach if your data is critical. You don't want to make
a mistake and end up reformatting your hard drive by accident during the
install.

 

[Plato]

We have a hard drive which has failed. Not sure if it's a mechanical
failure or some other problem. We've tried setting it as a slave to see if
we could recover any data. But when we try booting, a windows message states
that the slave hard drive is a failed drive. In the bios, the drive is not
recognized afterward.

My question is this: Rather than send the drive to a company which
specializes in data recovery, is there any good documentation available on
how to recover data off a mechanically failed hard drive ourselves?

There is no way you can do that yourself. Why? Because with a hard drive
that has failed for mechanical reasons you have to have a "clean" room
to take it apart and either swap the board or put the platters in
another drive to get the data off.