Hard Drive 0 Failure

[bunchofquestions]

Hi,

My 4 months old Dell Workstation hard drive failed yesterday. Its a
80gig WD EIDE. There was a XP blue screen which I have never seen
earlier with XP. So I restarted it. Failed to boot, "Hard drive 0
failure". There was a clicking noise until it displayed the failure
message. BIOS setup partially recognised drive model # and
size(4227MB). I tried master slave with same model/manufacturer, but
the BIOS didn't recognise it. Single drive, at least partially
recognised. My questions are, without going through expensive recovery
companies what are my options. Will ghost, DI or TI work. Can I get my
data back? I also tried changing the data cable, just have the power
cable connected nothing to avail.

Appreciate your help.

Thank U and have a great weekend.

 

[SimMike-]

It sounds like hardware drive failure. What you might be able to do, if you have
a second computer, is take the drive out and connect to the secondary controller
of another computer. If Windows gets up and running, try repairing the disk with
scandisk. Transfer any files you might need to the other computer. From the
description of your problem, it sounds like your chance of using Ghost to make a
useable copy of your Windows install is just about nil. At best you might be
able to grab critical data files off the drive. At worst, the drive is toast and
you need to get replaced, hopefully under warranty.

 

[Sideshow Bob]

I went through this very same situation 2 weeks ago. You can try his
suggestion, I did but it didn't work for me. However, I had no trouble
getting a RMA and a replacement drive from Western Digital.

 

[Sideshow Bob]

I went through this very same situation 2 weeks ago. You can try his
suggestion, I did but it didn't work for me. However, I had no trouble
getting a RMA and a replacement drive from Western Digital.

 

[Odie]

<......
If Windows gets up and running, try repairing the disk with

scandisk.

This is the worst thing you can possibly do. If you had any chance of
data recovery beforehand, you will almost definitely void that chance by
running scandisk.

Odie

 

[someone]

Do not run scandisk!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

This is the worst thing you can possibly do.

You can't actually do it on a drive that isn't recognized, dummy.

 

[Odie]

You can't actually do it on a drive that isn't recognized, dummy.

Did you read the first line? To wit, "If Windows gets up and running...
etc."

Odie

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

My 4 months old Dell Workstation hard drive failed yesterday. Its a
80gig WD EIDE. There was a XP blue screen which I have never seen
earlier with XP. So I restarted it. Failed to boot, "Hard drive 0
failure". There was a clicking noise until it displayed the failure
message.

Sounds dead (pun intended).

BIOS setup partially recognised drive model # and size(4227MB).

It will do that from ROM. Does not mean it can actually access
anything on the disk.

I tried master slave with same model/manufacturer, but
the BIOS didn't recognise it. Single drive, at least partially
recognised. My questions are, without going through expensive recovery
companies what are my options. Will ghost, DI or TI work. Can I get my
data back?

Unlikely. These tools are for software failures, i.e. problems that
have been caused by application or OS malfunction. They all require
a working HDD, since software cannot repair hardware in most cases.

I also tried changing the data cable, just have the power
cable connected nothing to avail.

I would say you have done amost everything to make sure it is not
another part of the ahrdware that failed. One more thing would be
to try the HDD in another computer.

There are numerous other things you can try, but basically they
are all a waste of time, unless you are very lucky.

Arno