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Hard Drive Meltdown

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5 replies

by stepsimon

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First let me say, I thought I had it backed up.

Next, let me say, I was wrong.

I'm talking about a slave drive. It suddenly started clicking badly. I tried to run check disk on it from Windows (XP, that is), but chdsk would not launch. When I first restarted the computer it would not boot.

I removed the drive so that I could confirm that it was the slave and not the master. It booted up with no problem. I reinstalled the drive and Windows booted.

The drive is no longer clicking, but when I try to access it, a message pops up saying that the drive is not formatted and asking if I would like to format it.

I'm thinking this means the MBR is caput. Any thoughts?

5 replies

by maniacman

MBR is definitely hosed. If you can get your hands on a recovery utility like Norton Utils, you may be able to correct the problem so that you can at least pull the data off to a good drive.

by robo_dev

Time to try the freezer trick?

This sounds crazy, but it works.

Do a google search on 'freezing a hard drive'

by stepsimon

When I researched the problem I heard about the freezer trick.

Into the freezer it goes. Wish me luck.

by pappyld04

I've had this happen in my girlfriends VAIO. I thought bad HDD but when I installed it on my own PC it worked fine and is still in that PC! As for the freezer trick I have seen that and I believe it was in the Instructables site!

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