Crashed Hard Drive

There are a few methods you can try before you send it off to data-recovery. YOu must have a steady hand and good memory as to where parts go, though.

Take a small screwdriver and very carefully remove the controller board on the drive. There will be a strip that is attached and runs into the drive, if you look carefully at the connection, it has little slide out sides you can release and slide the ribbon out of.

With an identical drive, perform the same operations, and swap the controller cards. See if this will enable it to boot. Slave the drive to another and transfer the data ASAP, then swap controller cards back at the end.

If you do NOT have another controller card, still try removing and then carefully reseating the card on the drive. I've tried this on several drives, and 50% of the time it will give you enough life to get the data off before it pooches again.

Good luck!
Gryf

I had that happen to 4 IBM drives in one year. They make a beeping noise and then die. The only salvation was having backups of the data, though they were somewhat old.

I have heard that recovery firms generally only try to recover specific data, and cost many thousands of dollars.

Often the problem with BIOS not recognizing the drive is with the cable, cable connections, or jumper settings. Make sure your jumper is still attached and in the right position. Next check the cable or try a new cable, make sure it's oriented correctly. Inspect the contacts and make sure they're clean, a little bit of oxidation on the contacts can cause problems.

If that doesn't work, the problem might be with the Promise card. Remove the Promise card when testing the drive on the motherboard.

what do you see with debug when you look at the sectors ?

what sort of weakness is in the drivers ?

Drivesavers? Several years ago I sent a 40GB laptop IDE drive formatted with NTFS using their 5-7 day turn around. When all was said and done it took 5 days and about $1000. The clicking sound is probably a head crash that can destroy the surface of your drives platters and thus your data. If the drive was clicking the last time you had it turned on then call at 1-800-440-1904 and enlist Drivesavers.

This is the only data recovery service I have used and my experience was excellent. The user?s data was completely recovered and at a price while high was justifiable.

Leave it in a fridge overnight, has worked for 2 out of 3 times. Or, this one seems a little harsh: whack it! Use the flat of your hand and "slam" it into the palm of your other hand. Laugh? Yes, but that has worked for me 6 of 9 times. On SCSI (RAID drives) and IDE drives. Did the whack thing after fridge did not work.

I try freezing for about 2-3 hours and then retry (about 25%), then swapping the circuit board(10%) and if those fail and the data is worth $1000-$1800, a recovery firm is the next option.

I have had only a few that made it to data recovery firms, usually because I have good backup processes for items I care about. The firm I just sent (my second drive in 3 years) a critical drive that slipped through the backup processes is Ontrack. the have very good customer service and good recovery rates from comments I have read from others on the web

recovery firms are very expensive but they can get the data off I don't think this will work but you can try this go to Dos and try fdisk \fixmbr may work maynot