Hardware Help Hard Drive Failure

Redgun71

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Help Needed!

My hard drive failed to boot last night (on screen it stated failed boot device), I assumed it was missing a path/file as that's what happened 18 months ago.

When the HD was in the laptop it starts making sounds which I only can described as - nerr noot, nerr noot, nerr noot.
So I took the HD out of my (5 year old) laptop, put it into a caddy and plug it into another laptop, as soon as I plug it in it starts making those sounds again and the HD is not showing up.

I would just like the contents/files off the HD, does anyone know if this is still possible?

Thanks
 
sounds like a head crash which pretty much means its kaput. You could try putting the drive inside of a plastic bag and then another plastic bag and putting it in the freezer overnight. It might power up once or twice with that method.

If the stuff is vital then don't do anything and call data recovery company, depending on what caused the failure they may be able to recover but expect a price tag of between £500 and a grand, potentially even more.
 
I personally think my hard drive head is stuck on the platter.
Sorry I don't understand how the CD could work, I don't know where you could buy one either.
I'm going to pass it on to a work colleague who use to work on fixing viruses on hard drives.

Thanks for help & advice so far.
 
I personally think my hard drive head is stuck on the platter.
Sorry I don't understand how the CD could work, I don't know where you could buy one either.
I'm going to pass it on to a work colleague who use to work on fixing viruses on hard drives.

Thanks for help & advice so far.

Hirens is downloadable free from the Internet. If the HD head is stuck on the platter the drive is fooked anyway but the head USUALLY mashes against the end-stop and the actuator isn't powerful enough to drag it off.

Considering it's pretty much fooked by the sound it won't hurt to try the 'Arnie' solution. Now, I know this will sound brutal but, take the drive and slam it against a worktop hard on one side, then repeat on the other side and give it another try. If the head is stuck ANYWHERE it's gonna be free now lol

If you don't get a result you lost what?

Good Luck :)
 
Hirens is downloadable free from the Internet. If the HD head is stuck on the platter the drive is fooked anyway but the head USUALLY mashes against the end-stop and the actuator isn't powerful enough to drag it off.

Considering it's pretty much fooked by the sound it won't hurt to try the 'Arnie' solution. Now, I know this will sound brutal but, take the drive and slam it against a worktop hard on one side, then repeat on the other side and give it another try. If the head is stuck ANYWHERE it's gonna be free now lol

If you don't get a result you lost what?

Good Luck :)

I believe I have done something similar already (hammer fisted my laptop :Angryfire) before I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 - lol.
 
If the data is very important, you could try buying an identical HDD on Ebay, and then swapping the platters from your drive to the new one.
 
If the data is very important, you could try buying an identical HDD on Ebay, and then swapping the platters from your drive to the new one.




see if you can get any thing form the drive on MiniXP (Hirens is downloadable free from the Internet)

please don't buy a drive from fleabay and try to open it up and change the platters , this will just kill 2 hard drive in one go because a hard drive is made and built in a uncontaminated chamber , soon as you open the drive you will more likely to contaminate the drive with duts , dirt , hair , fingerprints ,ect
 
Hi Spud,

My sugguestion was a last resort.

I've done it a few times in work and it has worked, however its only done to get the data and then the drive is binned.
 
If the data is very important, you could try buying an identical HDD on Ebay, and then swapping the platters from your drive to the new one.

see if you can get any thing form the drive on MiniXP (Hirens is downloadable free from the Internet)

please don't buy a drive from fleabay and try to open it up and change the platters , this will just kill 2 hard drive in one go because a hard drive is made and built in a uncontaminated chamber , soon as you open the drive you will more likely to contaminate the drive with duts , dirt , hair , fingerprints ,ect

Yep, it's the control board you change, not the platters.

Also, it needs to not only be the same model, but from the same batch of drives - even then it's not guaranteed to work.
 
i have a box with about 4 or 5 drives in that go click click click and was wondering what i could do to get the data back going to try the slam it method cheers guys
 
please don't buy a drive from fleabay and try to open it up and change the platters , this will just kill 2 hard drive in one go because a hard drive is made and built in a uncontaminated chamber , soon as you open the drive you will more likely to contaminate the drive with duts , dirt , hair , fingerprints ,ect
Swapping the circuit boards used to be feasable, but I read that now even that no longer works. Swapping platters sounds bonkers.

Also read on drives that are 'ticking', opening it up and manually moving the heads back into resting position and closing it back up may allow you with enough lifetime to successfully transfer off your data. Look it up on Youtube if you're desperate ;-)
 
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