General hard drive question

[Phil]

Daughter called me last week , disc error problem, she had it looked at,
turned out to be the hard drive. What usually fails in a hard drive ? In a
complete failure I would suspect the motor that actually spins the disc ,
would it be possible to replace the motor from another drive and salvage the
info ? I realize that it wouldn't be in a clean room like it is when it's
been manufactured , just wondering ( and preparing for the day when mine
crashes ).

Phil

 

[Guest]

I had Maxtor 60 gig 7200 rpm drive fail and got Mator utility from:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software Downloads

Test showed ‘Attribute’ failure so I took desktop to Future Shop
& got a non Maxtor, less expensive 40 gig replacement. Future Shop Tech
asked if I wanted him to attempt recovery of data from failed drive which I
declined. So there may be a tool that can recover data. Maxtor utility worked

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Phil

Forget replacing any parts within the HDD and just do regular backups.. go
into your system BIOS and enable SMART.. that will give some indication that
all is not well.. even so, an HDD can be working at the point of a system
shutdown, never to restart again.. it happens..

This is why backups are SO IMPORTANT..

 

[Bill Ridgeway]

Forget any idea of replacing any parts on the hard disk drive.

It **may be possible** to salvage your (personal) files. Install your dud
HD into your computer (making sure that there is no conflict with other IDE
devices) . If it spins and doesn't stop the computer just copy and paste to
your new HD. Even if it is the last time it spins up it should be worth it.

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions

 

[Phil]

Thanks to you all for the information , have a great weekend.

Phil