ok, old mateys pc goes to boot one day, no boot disk found, combined with a nice clunky noise from his ibm deathstar (lolz, howd it last this long)

bios wont detect the drive now
in any machine

im guessing she is pretty much cactus and have the drive in the freezer at home now

will the linux super boot disk help this drive if bios wont detect it?

i have a usb caddy that i can mount the drive in also

any suggestions on anything i could do to try and save some data?

put it in the freezer lol

If it's clunking then the heads have probably hit the platters so it's game over.

I've used the usb caddy to get around undetectableness before

Freezer trick actually is quite successful.

One of the guys at work had a notebook with an IBM drive go belly up, was pinging all over the place so wrapped up in an anti static bag in the freezer it went.

He left it a little long and it was pretty uber frozen but after it had sat for a little - walah all the data came off that he needed.



Other than that theres no much you could do other than a platter transplant into another working drive, but that is out of most peoples leauge/budgets.

send flowers :)

Freezer trick has saved me on several occasions with Deathstar drives.

Freeze, copy, junk the drive. Rinse, repeat.

yup, tahnks ladies, i will leave it there for a day or two and see what can be saved

In my experiences, you don't even need to leave in there for too long - I chuck em in for about an hour, hour and a half and bob's yer pre-op auntie.

really?
cool, ta creepy, mite have a crack at it tonite then;

Any idea on how that helps?

^ umm...you did go to school right?
heat expands, cold contracts

why would contraction help a busted hard drive

Makes the bits smaller so they can fit through the tubes better?

durr

Would not contracting the drive cause the disk to move out of alignment with the drive head and the cold cause stress on the mechanical components?

You guys are so cruel. They're leading you on. Putting it in the freezer doesn't do a damn thing for them, well not the act of being in the cold anyway. The drives work once they've been in there because the little man in the fridge that turns the light on & off fixes the hard drive while it's in there. Has nothing to do with the cold at all.

Not true. I have recovered several drives using the freezer method.
To name a few :- IBM deskstar's , a WD drive, an IBM notebook HDD's. Whilst this does not work all the time in fact it rarely works it is worth a shot. I have also successfully transfered platters before. This was took a fair bit of time and care however ended up being easier than I expected. Keep in mind you will be destroying a perfectly working drive in the process.

Keep in mind you will be destroying a perfectly working drive in the process.

or you could spend ~$1500 for some local Brisbane guys to take your gear into their cleanroom, rebuild the HDD with new platters, while still retaining the full warranty of your Seagate/WD/Hitachi/Fuji drive =) Impressed to see we have companies in the local area who can partially rebuild full raid-6 volumes with purpose-built hardware for the job. You point to what can be saved, and pay by the gigabyte for what you want extracted


still, +1 vote for the freezer option. freezer +3hrs = win if the customer wasn't silly enough to leave the machine on for an hour/day/week too long in the hope it would just 'wake up and set itself right'.


last edited by koopz at 02:37:15 25/Jan/07

I admit I was both wary and skeptical at first when hearing of this remedy...but I've had plenty of success on early-failed drives.

Of course, it only works if the symptom is the same - lubrication issues with the bearings inside the drive. Some have claimed it to add several days, even months of extra 'life'. I tend not to follow that practice though, I just get the data off it asap and trash the drive.

Also, it's a good idea to wait a short period after taking it out of the freezer - get rid of the initial condensation that'll form (QLD weather ftw!) and avoid any potential cold-to-hot expansion issues. You want to solidify some of the disk's innards - not actually contract anything.

Also, don't do this: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1028112728

:)

yup, drive is totally cactus

will call some data rescuing mobs and see what prices we are gonna be looking at to try and save whats on the drive

You can never pay too much to save quality pron.

zoiks, $1000 for data recovery (CPL redcliffe)

anyone got any mobs they have used to physyically recover stuff from a dead drive that are slightly more reasonable?!

I do data recovery. $200 if unsuccessful $500 if successful but it comes down to how much the data is worth to you.

I'll give it a go. I'll only charge $100 for a failed attempt!

haha, tempting stinky

dodgymon, where joo at?

dodgy is pikachu pulling a billy or drinking a XXXX?
I've never been able to tell

whilst ambiguous, i think it is a XXXX.

I do data recovery. $200 if unsuccessful $500 if successful but it comes down to how much the data is worth to you.

sweet jebus! We are seriously undercharging for this..

It's a XXXX and I only charge that for platter transfers. If it were just a case where someone deleted data then it's usually around the $150 mark. But platter transfers are time consuming and hard + your destroying 2 drives in the process so the $200 is just to cover costs.
I would say there is 70% chance of sucess considering the symtoms posted.

I work for myself.

last edited by Dodgymon at 01:39:32 31/Jan/07

You guys are so cruel. They're leading you on. Putting it in the freezer doesn't do a damn thing for them, well not the act of being in the cold anyway. The drives work once they've been in there because the little man in the fridge that turns the light on & off fixes the hard drive while it's in there. Has nothing to do with the cold at all.

You're such a fagot.

I'll give it a go. I'll only charge $100 for a failed attempt!

Let's go into a partnership. I'll do the failed attempts, you use your marketing genius to find suckers customers. We'll split it 50/50