Total harddrive failure...options

[Bryon Lape]

I had a power spike zapped my PS, mobo, both harddrives, CD drive and CD
writer. The drives are all IDE and the mobo was an ASUS Slot 1. The
CPU and memory survived. When I hook either of the harddrives to
another mobo, they do not spin up nor is the mobo able to boot.
Removing drive from ribbon cable does allow boot from CD (not the dead
one). Do I have any chance of getting data off these drives? Will one
of those harddrive data reclaim services work?

Thanks.

 

[philo]

I had a power spike zapped my PS, mobo, both harddrives, CD drive and CD
writer. The drives are all IDE and the mobo was an ASUS Slot 1. The
CPU and memory survived. When I hook either of the harddrives to
another mobo, they do not spin up nor is the mobo able to boot.
Removing drive from ribbon cable does allow boot from CD (not the dead
one). Do I have any chance of getting data off these drives? Will one
of those harddrive data reclaim services work?

Thanks.

all data recovery services are quite expensive...
however...check first with the HD mfg to see if they have such service.
i know seagate has such support even for non-seagate drives

 

[Rod Speed]

I had a power spike zapped my PS, mobo, both harddrives, CD drive and CD
writer.

You were warned about that grave dancing...

The drives are all IDE and the mobo was an ASUS Slot 1. The CPU and memory
survived.

Doesnt matter much, well past their useby date now.

When I hook either of the harddrives to another mobo, they do not spin up nor
is the mobo able to boot.

Likely they are slugging the 12V rail badly enough
that the power supply shuts down immediately.

Removing drive from ribbon cable does allow boot from CD (not the dead one).
Do I have any chance of getting data off these drives?

Yes, the drives may well be old enough that you can swap the logic
card with a known good identical model drive and get the data back.

Will one of those harddrive data reclaim services work?

Yes, but you'd better be sitting down when they tell you the price.

Quite viable for a business, but not usually for a personal
desktop system and since its so old, its likely you're a pov.

 

[Bryon Lape]

all data recovery services are quite expensive...
however...check first with the HD mfg to see if they have such service.
i know seagate has such support even for non-seagate drives

They are both Maxtor drives and they do not offer such services.

 

[Bryon Lape]

message



You were warned about that grave dancing...




Doesnt matter much, well past their useby date now.




Likely they are slugging the 12V rail badly enough
that the power supply shuts down immediately.

The PS doesn't shutdown on boot. The mobo just sits in POST waiting for
the second coming.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

Its more likely that the spike zapped the PS, or it just died,
and thats what killed most of what was powered from it.

The PS doesn't shutdown on boot. The mobo just sits in POST waiting for the
second coming.

How long did you wait ? Some motherboards do take a
surprisingly long time to decide that no viable hard drives are
present, but it should eventually decide that there arent any and
attempt to boot off the other drives listed in the boot sequence.

Maybe the dead drive is slugging the 12V rail bad enough
that it cant make any sense of the response its getting
from the other drives like the optical drives or something.

 

[Kevin Buffardi]

When I hook either of the harddrives to another mobo,

they do not spin up nor is the mobo able to boot. [...]
The PS doesn't shutdown on boot. The mobo just sits in POST waiting for
the second coming.

Can you see or smell any damage to thoe HDs' boards?

Most likely, only minimal damage (if any at all) damage was done to the
actual hard drive platters with the power surge. Some people claim to
have bought an identical drive and just swapped the boards onto the old
(zapped) drive, but if it doesn't work, that's more money down the drain.

Data recovery services should be able to recover most (if not all) of
your data, but they'll charge you an arm and a leg... maybe take your
firstborn too. Depending on how fast turnaround time you want, and how
much capacity the harddrives hold, they'll probably ask three- to four-
digits, USD.

I've been in your situation too. Luckily, I had backed up all my vital
data onto CD-RW's, but a couple months of work went *poof*

Good luck.
(and next time back up your data to a removable or network drive)

//Kevin

 

[johns]

Power spike THAT bad will have crashed your drive
head bigtime. I suspect the recording surface is ruined
too.

johns

 

[David Maynard]

Power spike THAT bad will have crashed your drive
head bigtime. I suspect the recording surface is ruined
too.

johns

Why would you conclude that a power spike must necessarily cause a head crash?

 

[Odie Ferrous]

I had a power spike zapped my PS, mobo, both harddrives, CD drive and CD
writer. The drives are all IDE and the mobo was an ASUS Slot 1. The
CPU and memory survived. When I hook either of the harddrives to
another mobo, they do not spin up nor is the mobo able to boot.
Removing drive from ribbon cable does allow boot from CD (not the dead
one). Do I have any chance of getting data off these drives? Will one
of those harddrive data reclaim services work?

Thanks.

Byron,

If you get really stuck, have a look at my website.

My charges don't approach the stratosphere at all.


Odie

 

[Arno Wagner]

Why would you conclude that a power spike must necessarily cause a
head crash?

I don't see any reason for that either. Semiconductor damage is likely,
but the heads flat on an air-cushion generated by the spindle spinning.
To channel enough energy to the spindle to change the speed significantly
would need a very short burst with very high enery and that would likely
just vapozise the motor controller instead. The only option for actual
damage to the mechanics I see is if the pre-amplifiers near the heads are
purnt or vaporsed. I don't think that it is possible to do that, since
they are pritected by voltage regulators and filters.

Arno

 

[Pontus Menno]

On Wed, 04 May 2005 01:03:45 GMT, Bryon Lape wrote

Do I have any chance of getting data off these drives?

Try to find a copy of the defunct Search and Rescue 1.0
software by PowerQuest?

-- Pontus Menno

 

[Rod Speed]

Power spike THAT bad will have crashed your drive head bigtime.

Unlikely. Its more likely that spike killed the PS and that
died badly, killing what was powered from it, or there
wasnt even a power spike at all and the PS just died.

I suspect the recording surface is ruined too.

Very unlikely indeed.

 

[philo]

They are both Maxtor drives and they do not offer such services.

well, i think i'd contact seagate anyway...they claim they can recover
data from non-seagate drives! i'd rather have a HD mfg try to recover the
data since you have a severe hw failure... my guess is that it will be
over $1000 though!

 

[DaveW]

Hardware data recovery services usually run around $1000 U.S. per harddrive.

 

[sbb78247]

cry!

 

[~ Avery Anderson~]

on the back up front, I don't know how reliable it will be in the long run,
but I have a gmail account and back up my stuff there now. So far so good.

Avery

 

[~ Avery Anderson~]

straw grasping is in order here, what i'd try is adding one as a slave to
working system and see if it shows up, then I'd try the other one.

I was recently successful doing that with a "dead" drive that wouldn't spin
up in the owner's computer. It was cryin' time again in PC city, etc., but
for some reason unknown to me, it spun up in my system and I was able to
grab the My Doc folder before it failed.

Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing the drive
for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a slave. They say when
this works you have about 5 minutes to get what you gotta get. The theory
is the freeze shrinks the metel and the stuck spindle is released until
expansion due to friction heat sticks it again.

Avery

 

[sbb78247]

straw grasping is in order here, what i'd try is adding one as a
slave to working system and see if it shows up, then I'd try the
other one.
I was recently successful doing that with a "dead" drive that
wouldn't spin up in the owner's computer. It was cryin' time again
in PC city, etc., but for some reason unknown to me, it spun up in my
system and I was able to grab the My Doc folder before it failed.

Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing
the drive for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a
slave. They say when this works you have about 5 minutes to get what
you gotta get. The theory is the freeze shrinks the metel and the
stuck spindle is released until expansion due to friction heat sticks
it again.
Avery

only thing is, how much do you want to gamble?

if you power up a failing drive you do stand the chance of getting back the
data or total screwing the platters.

also, the freezer trick may work, but beware of condensation forming on the
thawing parts. water+eletrical current=letting out the magic smoke. and
once the smoke is out, it is a real bitch putting it back in.

S

 

[Rod Speed]

straw grasping is in order here, what i'd try is adding one as a slave to
working system and see if it shows up, then I'd try the other one.

He's already tried that.

I was recently successful doing that with a "dead" drive that wouldn't spin up
in the owner's computer. It was cryin' time again in PC city, etc., but for
some reason unknown to me, it spun up in my system and I was able to grab the
My Doc folder before it failed.

That's usually something quite basic, a defective power connector
in the original system. The metal tunnels the pins go into can open
up over time and not make good contact. If that is the case, you
dont need to put the hard drive in another system, just try one of
the other power connectors, like off one of the optical drives etc.

There are also a few drives that wont power up if the
drive type in the bios has more sectors than the drive
physically has, and the easy way to avoid that problem
is to ensure that the drive type entry is set to AUTO.

Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing the drive
for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a slave.

Unlikely to be relevant when the drives died when the power supply died.

They say when this works you have about 5 minutes to get what you gotta get.
The theory is the freeze shrinks the metel and the stuck spindle is released
until expansion due to friction heat sticks it again.

It aint the spindle that sticks in modern drives. The
usual reason that freezing can help is a dry joint that
conducts when cold but not once its warmed up.