awsome. i have to act like a n00b and make a help thread.

[Signa]

if you didnt think me a moron before, you likly will now.

a few days ago, my largest hard drive stoped working, and i lost about 150+ gigs of data. unlike most hard drive issues i am familer with, this crash was completely sudden and unexpected. it appears the only problem is that the BIOS wont recognize that there is a hard drive plugged in, which makes things all the more upsetting for me, because my data is most likely all there, just inaccessable.

what im wondering is if anyone knows A LOT about hard drives and if there is a way to force the computer to see the drive. im assuming that im just plain screwed, but its worth asking you all because one of you might know somthing that will help me.

thanks.

[Mels_Smileys45]

You acted like a noob when you didn't back that shit up! Just messin' with ya, I feel for you. I have a hard drive I cant get access to right now with files I should have backed up. Not 150+ gigs though, thats gotta hurt!

[Signa]

yah, i had some really irreplacable things in there. some video clips of my hyperactive ADD brother, a collection of MP3s that will be sorely missed, and worst of all, the flash movie that i worked on for about 3 years. it was quite funny too, it was about final fantasy VII and cloud and zack killing telletubies 'n' stuff. well done at the time.

[d3ft0n3s]

manually set the cyliders and heads?

thats al i can think of other then sending it off to a specalist to get it retreived.

[Signa]

sadly, i looked for that, but i coudlnt find it in my BIOS to try it. even if i could, i dont know what values i would have to use. i suppose i could find out if i ever found how to do it.

[ferrarimodena360]

it appears the only problem is that the BIOS wont recognize that there is a hard drive plugged in, which makes things all the more upsetting for me, because my data is most likely all there, just inaccessable.

what im wondering is if anyone knows A LOT about hard drives and if there is a way to force the computer to see the drive.

thanks.

IMO
your partition is NTFS thats why u cant access the drive, when ur booting from command prompt
make this hdd a slave to a pc running 2000 or xp, and ur data would show up

Hope this helps

[vipp]

I assume you've checked to make sure all connections are secure? I once 'lost' a drive, but all that had happened was that the plug had come just a bit loose. It didn't look loose, but it was.

[Infinite blasphemy]

I had the same problem, check the cables.

[Signa]

IMO
your partition is NTFS thats why u cant access the drive, when ur booting from command prompt
make this hdd a slave to a pc running 2000 or xp, and ur data would show up

Hope this helps


could you go a little more in-depth as to what you mean? from what i have done, half of the condidtions are met, since i am running XP, and it is already a slave drive. i havnt tried booting to the promt yet, but i dont see the point if the BIOS doesnt see the drive.

and vipp, thanks for the suggestion. some times the easiest things are overlookable. but if it was a simple connection problem, it would be pretty weird to have it *look* connected in the other 3 PCs i tested the drive in.

[ferrarimodena360]

could you go a little more in-depth as to what you mean? from what i have done, half of the condidtions are met, since i am running XP, and it is already a slave drive. i havnt tried booting to the promt yet, but i dont see the point if the BIOS doesnt see the drive.

and vipp, thanks for the suggestion. some times the easiest things are overlookable. but if it was a simple connection problem, it would be pretty weird to have it *look* connected in the other 3 PCs i tested the drive in.

i was suggesting if u hook it up with other pc's but seems u have already tried that, just goto a professional

[silentscream]

i had the same trouble

in the end i opened up the drive and the heads were jammed

with a little wiggling they were ok and i managaed the get the drive working

i backed up all the stuff but i no longer trust the drive so i use it a scratch disk for image and 3d rendering

if all else fails have a look in it

it may just be stuck

if u can get it working for like an hour u can back it all up

Greg

[nukehella]

Have you tried any data recovery progs?Sometimes they will see a drive that is not listed in My Computer.Try Easy Recovery or Getdataback.There are lots of others,but these 2 usually work for me.
Getting 150+GB back is PITA though. I'd just get the stuff off you really want for now and stick the drive in a drawer to be dealt with later(probaly never in my case)

[codePhreak91]

Did you try putting it in a external usb hard drive case?

[DigitalJunkie]

First, did you go into BIOS & write your settings down?

If it is not your cable been loose, I would check the hardware drivers by letting it look for changes automatically in Device Manager. If that still doesn't work, update the BIOS driver if any & have the BIOS automatically check for any hard disk drive(s). Then manually check other settings to values setted before!

[vipp]

could you go a little more in-depth as to what you mean? from what i have done, half of the condidtions are met, since i am running XP, and it is already a slave drive. i havnt tried booting to the promt yet, but i dont see the point if the BIOS doesnt see the drive.

and vipp, thanks for the suggestion. some times the easiest things are overlookable. but if it was a simple connection problem, it would be pretty weird to have it *look* connected in the other 3 PCs i tested the drive in.

Do you have another drive that you can test in that same spot in place of the faulty one? If 3 other pc's 'see' it, and that pc doesn't, it still sounds like some sort of connection problem in that 4th pc. Try a drive from another pc if you can, and see if it works.

[Signa]

Did you try putting it in a external usb hard drive case?


yes, that was an excellent suggestion. the i had the same idea of passing the bios by using the USB drive, but when i plug it in, it says "USB device not functioning properly" i messed with it for about a half hour, setting different jumpers and flipping the power switch, but it didnt do anything.

Have you tried any data recovery progs?Sometimes they will see a drive that is not listed in My Computer.Try Easy Recovery or Getdataback.There are lots of others,but these 2 usually work for me.
Getting 150+GB back is PITA though. I'd just get the stuff off you really want for now and stick the drive in a drawer to be dealt with later(probaly never in my case)

i didnt know data recovery progs would do that. ill have to give them a try. got any other decent suggestions for programs to try incase those dont work?

@silentscream: so was the HD powering up, and the disks spinning, but the PC wouldnt see that it was there? i know when i put it in the USB drive, i would hear the heads read once before it started playing dead again.

@vipp: sorry, i phrased it weird. no, the drive isnt working in any of the pcs. what i meant is that if its a connection problem like you suggested, then i would have had to misconnected it 3 times in a row for the problem to be somthing that simple.

@digitaljunky: i tried the device manager, and it didnt work. updateing the BIOS shouldnt do anything because the drive has been working fine for 2 years. and there is no setting to write down in the bios because nothing is showing :P

thank you everyone for the suggestions that you are giving. even if nothing works, it still means a lot to me having you all help me with this. a few notes of good news: i found some back-ups, and things arent as bad as they could have been. i also orderd a 300GB drive to replace this 200Gb. awsome, so i can lose MORE stuff at once when this one crashes :3

thanks again. and if you have anything else to add, tell me. the backups are old, and it still would be great to reclaim the family videos 'n' stuff

[shawners]

Some mentioned backing up the drive.. But has anyone ever backup a 150 gigs of data?? and where to? 37 dvd's?

[mountain_rage]

Its too late now but i would of bough 2 150gig h/d isntead of 1 300gig then I would of raided the drives. That is if you have that option if you dont then whatever. But raid is great for these such problems you will never loose data in a harddrive fail.

[zarquon]

Is the drive ide or serial-ata. If its s-ata then you may just need to enable the s-ata controller in the bios. If its a physical prob with disk, who may be able to knock the cylinder back into alignment, by tapping it in increasing levels of hardness( you've nothing to lose if the drive is already dead.) If its ide make sure all the pins are intact on the connector block, sometimes they bend or brake if an ide cable is incorrectly inserted.

[Signa]

i know it depends on the raid, but a 2 drive raid is more risky (to my knowledge) than one drive because if one failes, both lose their data. the trade-off is much faster read/write speeds. and no, i dont have the room for it, nor the slots on the IDE channels. sure, i could get a card, but its alot of work i dont feel like doing.

[wonderboy2005]

This may sound like a stupid suggestion, but it occasionally does revive a drive for a short period of time. take the drive out of your PC and stick it in a freezer for a while. then let it return to room temp and try using it again.

The theory behind this is that many hard drives contain a fluid in their bearing system, and now and then that fluid builds up a sort of gunk that won't allow a drive to spin up initially. hard drives have very high rpm motors in them, but they have little torque, so even a little resistance can stop them from even starting up. freezing is supposed to eliminate some of that build up, thus allowing the drive to be used again.

If you try this and it does work, make sure to back up everything you want off of that drive as its probably on its last leg.

[Lehk]

i know it depends on the raid, but a 2 drive raid is more risky (to my knowledge) than one drive because if one failes, both lose their data. the trade-off is much faster read/write speeds. and no, i dont have the room for it, nor the slots on the IDE channels. sure, i could get a card, but its alot of work i dont feel like doing.

raid 0 with two drives is risky, raid 0 is striped (one big drive) and technically not raid because it is not redundant.

raid 1 with two drives is perfectly safe, simply mirrors the contents of one drive to another. raid 1 is inefficent though paying for twice the storage you get.

raid 5 is the good kind, using pairity instead of mirroring three drives have the storage capacity of 2 normal configuraiton or striped drives, 4 will store 3 drives of data, 5 drives will hold 4 drives worth of data.

only problem with raid 5 is you need at least 3 drives for it to be useful.




now on to your problem it sounds to me like the logic board (circuits) on the drive failed and you might be able to recover the drive by obtaining an identical logic board and swapping them if you have the skill, or finding a computer show willing to try swapping the boards for less money than data recovery companies charge.

[silentscream]

some great ideas flying around here :)

.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Some mentioned backing up the drive.. But has anyone ever backup a 150 gigs of data?? and where to? 37 dvd's?


Are you serious? Back up as you go along and don't get lazy. I sometimes get lazy, like right now, I'm about 90 gigs behind. That sucks but you either need to back up or face losing your data from time to time.

[silentscream]

i backup my media on disks and my data on another machine

once a month i dedicate a few hours to the job

my laptop died recently and theing that ticked me off most is that i lost all my photos i had taken on a trip :(

the harddisk was fried and returned to me along with my fixed laptop

but the disk was in a sorry state(was pretty burnt, no idea how) so there was no chance of recovery even for maybe a hundred meg of files :(

.

[Signa]

raid 0 with two drives is risky, raid 0 is striped (one big drive) and technically not raid because it is not redundant.

raid 1 with two drives is perfectly safe, simply mirrors the contents of one drive to another. raid 1 is inefficent though paying for twice the storage you get.

raid 5 is the good kind, using pairity instead of mirroring three drives have the storage capacity of 2 normal configuraiton or striped drives, 4 will store 3 drives of data, 5 drives will hold 4 drives worth of data.

only problem with raid 5 is you need at least 3 drives for it to be useful.


now on to your problem it sounds to me like the logic board (circuits) on the drive failed and you might be able to recover the drive by obtaining an identical logic board and swapping them if you have the skill, or finding a computer show willing to try swapping the boards for less money than data recovery companies charge.



my thoughts exactly. what i was thinking on doing is goading western digital to sending me a new logic board, because the HD is still within warrenty. it sure woudlnt hurt them very much if they did that for me. otherwise, they need to send me a postage-paid box, and then pay postage on the new drive they send me. if they could do it my way i dont see how they could have a good reason to refuse other than "its against policy"

[Dark Messenger]

where do you live? If you're not far from my area you could mail the drive to me and I could send it back to you if reparable.

I haven't read the entire thread yet so only do this as a last resort if you're really desparate to salvage the data.

[Krell]

If this drive will not be seen by the BIOS in multiple machines, then the controller is dead.

toast

put a heatsink\cooler fan on your next drive, its $10 at CompUSA


.

[Signa]

where do you live? If you're not far from my area you could mail the drive to me and I could send it back to you if reparable.

I haven't read the entire thread yet so only do this as a last resort if you're really desparate to salvage the data.


washington. no not DC. that would be too easy. seeing that your profile says north carolina....

im prolly just going to investigate the controler replacement possibility

on a side note, i have like 100 gmail invites to burn, anyone want one?

[silentscream]

gmail goes public any day dont it ??

ive got a hundred too

good for storing photos (when u remember to actualy do it lol)

.

[Dark Messenger]

well I'll offer my suggestions but will stipulate that krell is probably right. If you had sent it to me I would have tried that freezing thing. And as a last resort would have purchased an indentical model and manually replaced the platens from the old drive in the new drive...although I don't know how feasible this is.

I may have some other idea's too but this is all I can come up with off the top of my head.

[Dark Messenger]

gmail goes public any day dont it ??



.

Was thinking the same thing...man I love technology don't you? :icon_scra

[silentscream]

yeah but i often find myself getting mad at it too

[Dark Messenger]

yeah but i often find myself getting mad at it too

I would rather tinker with a computer than an old buick any day..but mebbe that's just me. :icon_geek

[FriedSpam]

Don't know if you've checked out the Storage Review forums yet?

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showforum=2

full of helpful people (not that ZP isn't!) and lots of ideas of how to resurrect dead harddrives.



The Freezer trick might work but I'd only try it as a very last resort. It's possibly an urban myth (never tried it myself but might sometime soon when I decide to try and recover a 250GBer which went tits up).

Pro's and Con's of different tricks: http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=16205


The freezer trick in action: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1028112728

[The Hunter]

I have tried the freezer trick on an old 40 gig and it worked long enough for me to get some important family pics saved.

[Siskabush]

if you didnt think me a moron before, you likly will now.

a few days ago, my largest hard drive stoped working, and i lost about 150+ gigs of data. unlike most hard drive issues i am familer with, this crash was completely sudden and unexpected. it appears the only problem is that the BIOS wont recognize that there is a hard drive plugged in, which makes things all the more upsetting for me, because my data is most likely all there, just inaccessable.

what im wondering is if anyone knows A LOT about hard drives and if there is a way to force the computer to see the drive. im assuming that im just plain screwed, but its worth asking you all because one of you might know somthing that will help me.

thanks.
the electrical components are burnt out, and its time to hire a data recovery team, have fun. It Shal cost sexy money.

[Mels_Smileys45]

I would rather tinker with a computer than an old buick any day..but mebbe that's just me. :icon_geek

Yep, thats just you. Buicks are kick ass! But I gots no idea where this fits into this thread.





Stop drinking people. No, im not saying youre drinking people! Stop drinking, people! Drunk ass!

[FriedSpam]

the electrical components are burnt out, and its time to hire a data recovery team, have fun. It Shal cost sexy money.


Possibly not, especially if it's a Seagate (sorry, I forget if your mention the make and I'm too lazy to scroll back at the moment).


http://www.deadharddrive.com/


Please post how you get on and what worked/ what didn't work. I'm sure there are a few ZPers (or is it just me?) that have got a dead HD knocking around that they want to try and recover at some point.



For me, there's always hope that my files are still there if I haven't tried recovering it yet. Got me entire music collection sitting there in a cupboard waiting to be rescued...

[Mels_Smileys45]

You should ask Jezus for a hand with that. I hear good things, like miracles man. He might even gold plate it for you if he likes you enough.

[Digital Bliss]

Check the jumpers mabye have also have you installed or change anything recently that could result in this. It is always good to back track everything you did before it went down.