HDD urgent help required pls!

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hotwire

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hi guys i have a serious problem. my hdd is 320gb and i was using it in a external enclosure and on the weekend my sister dropped it and since then i cant seem to access it in anyway it starts to spin and makes a ticking noise but then just stops after a few seconds. i have very important information on it but it is only used upto 40gb the rest is blank.i need this information off it very very urgently. pls can anybody help i would be very greatful. many thanks in advance.
 
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bad luck indeed,

first thing is to get it into the PC case on the spare IDE cable.
This will eliminate the external case hardware from the equation.

Then hold your breath and power up the PC, go straight to the BIOS and see if the hardware is functioning and recognised.
Dont change anything and dont write to the volume.

If the BIOS can see it then there is a good chance that Windoze will see it too (or whatever OS you formatted it with).

Then take a look at it in windows, you might be lucky, but drops are sometimes fatal.

I lost 200Gb of data, backups, if fact a lot of valuable stuff, on christmas eve from a 500Gb drive, I have (this morning) just finished the recovery - I got it all back (praise the lard) my stupid mistake lost it - I slid out the HDD (mounted on a slidy-in-out tray thingy) before shutting down the system - trashed the entire directory...

Kinda pisses you off dunnit ?
 
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thanks for the reply mate have tried it on pc bios sees it but windows dont see it cos it only spins for a few seconds and ticks for a few seconds. how did u manage to recover everything? its well wounding even though its only 40gb of data. appreciate all ur help mate thanks.
 
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A long shot - but its worked for me in the past.. go to the HDD manufacturers website (eg if its a maxstor go to maxtor.com).

All of the manufacturers have native disk utilities - usually a ISO image of a diagnostic/repair CD that is bootable.

This may be able to fix the hardware up - be prepared to lose the data.

I used ONTRACK tools to get my stuff back lost a few files but as far as I can tell, nowt of importance. I got the important stuff back

Fingers crossed.
 
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if all else fails . put in a well sealed plastic bag with something to soak up any moisture and put it in the freezer overnight. as above make sure you have a spare drive to back up data, dont try to back up data on unused partition on same HDD. must be a different drive.

like I say last resort the freezer, peeps on here done that before
 
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One thing I have learned, if I am going to use a large drive as an archive for important or critical info, then I will NOT use an external drive.

Apart from the risk of drop, there is the risk of either power failure (pulling the power cable) or data loss if the USB cable is unplugged - when windows loses sight of the drive, it can destroy thhe directory structure (as happened to me).

We will all have to get used to these huge drives going tits-up, as all drives do in the end, but never before has drive technology allowed us to lose such a massive amount of data as these latest drives.

500Gb is half a fookin terra-byte, these massive sizes were only available to IBM, NASA and similar organisations for mega-bucks, only 5 or 6 years ago. (well maybe 10)
 
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if you manage to get your files back, sometimes u can repair the drive by doing a 'low level' format. u can get the format software from the hdd manufacturers website. i saved 2x120 gig maxtor drives when i found out about about it. good luck recorvering ur data anyways
 
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If all else fails, as this is a genuine accident, the cost of the hardware replacement is probably covered by your household insurance, less the excess.
 
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ok i think im gonna go for the freezer option. i opened the drive and there is a scratch on the disk itself and the pins that reads the drive gets to where the scratch is and the ticks back to the center does this a few times and then stops running. thanks for your help guys but i the scratch looks pretty nasty.if you get any more ideas much appreciated. i cant run any software or recovery stuff on it as it dont read in a pc or read in a external enclosure. aaaaarrrrrggghhhhh. this is killing me.lol. thanks again guys.
 
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the freeze thing does work but with a scatch ? but u can put in in for less that 7 hours , after a few hours u will know if its working better , and if u have fast freeze even better m8
 
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with it scratched like that, i would say its fooked.

im no expert, but i cant see there being any software available that will tell the drive to jump over the scratch when it gets to it. so i think you should be prepared to loose that data.

you might be able to recover some data up to the point were its scratched though.

but good luck anyway
 
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hotwire said:
...... i opened the drive and there is a scratch on the disk itself and the pins that reads the drive gets to where the scratch is and the ticks back to the center does this a few times and then stops running. ......
Click to expand...

If you've actually opened it and can see the platters then its almost certainly fooked. You cant open these things in anything less than a clean room as a single dust particle is quite capable of destroying the heads !

The heads float above the disk surface at less than 1/50th the diameter of a human hair at speeds of 7200rpm (not sure but read this works out at over 1000km/h for the outer parts of the track). Collisions with even a fingerprint at that speed are usually fatal !
 
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ok guys thanks for all your help and replies freezer did the trick well most of it. i managed to recover some data like deedie said i reckon upto the point where it was scratched. the data i recovered was the important bit the rest was just movies. many thanks again.
 
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ok guys didnt want to start a new thread so here goes. got another 2.5" external harddrive from a laptop which is 60 gb. it wont boot up in the laptop have tried windows repair fixboot and allsorts. when connected through an external caddy it comes up in windows as drive E but when i click it it just wont open up any help guys thanks again in advance.
 
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