it isn't only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead

[quesarah]

My hard drive, that is. I pulled it out of the old computer, switched the jumper settings and hooked it up to virginmartyr1's computer. It appears in the device manager but there's no information under Properties. When I hit the setup menu on startup and tell BIOS to autodetect the slave drive, it comes up as unreadable.

I will be very upset if I can't salvage any data off the old hard drive. Financial records, years of collected recipes, music files, photos, icons, my Dexter mood theme... lots of irreplaceable stuff.

Comments

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

Does it make any spin-up noises, or clicky-thunky sounds, or anything?

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

It's not really making any of those whirring hard drive sounds, but I do feel a little hum that suggests it gets power.

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

Reposting because I suck at threading...

An absolute last-ditch tactic that's worked for me on a couple of dead laptop drives is to seal it inside an antistatic bag inside a ziplock bag with as much of the air out as possible and put it in the freezer for 4-6 hours. Then take it out, carefully wipe off any dew that forms in the next few seconds and immediately connect it up and see if it's readable.

However, this bit of what you said:

When I hit the setup menu on startup and tell BIOS to autodetect the slave drive, it comes up as unreadable.

implies that it might be an electronic rather than mechanical fault which the freezer trick wouldn't help with. Then we're into the realms of tracking down an identical circuit board from an identical drive and swapping it in. Which is doable (there's a UK company called retrodata that does this sort of thing), but fiddly.

On visual inspection of the drive's board (assuming it's not completely enclosed a la Seagate) does it look like any component might have overheated and let the magic smoke out?

Lastly, what's the make and size of the drive? It's not a Maxtor is it?

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

On visual inspection of the drive's board (assuming it's not completely enclosed a la Seagate) does it look like any component might have overheated and let the magic smoke out?

Nope, nothing obvious at least. The drive is a Western Digital 40GB EIDE drive (model WD400BB).

How does the freezer trick work? I'm intrigued.

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

Presumably it works on the basis that if something inside the drive is stuck, the temperature reduction causes enough contraction to unstick it.

It does sound highly dubious but I've seen it work with my own eyes. This was on drives that were going "ka-THUNK, ka-THUNK, ka-THUNK" before the freezing (and again once they'd been running for a few minutes and had warmed up).

[geli-tripping.livejournal.com]

That truly sucketh. I hope your data is salvagable.

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Oy. It sucketh greatly.

[madenglishbloke.livejournal.com]

ive found that its often possible to put a drive that isnt putting out anything on a *doze system into a*nix box and rip data from there.
weird but true.

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

For that, I'll need to farm out the job. *sigh*

[i_kender]

That's terrible. If you're really desperate, you should contact one of those nifty data retrieval people (like what madenglishbloke was talking about) - they can work wonders, or so I hear.

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

I've put in a call to a couple of knowledgeable friends; hopefully they can save the day (and my data).

[madenglishbloke.livejournal.com]

you should contact one of those nifty data retrieval people (like what madenglishbloke was talking about)

actually, i was talking about removing the drive from one of the *doze boxen on my server farm, and putting it in a linux box - usually means moving the drive no more than 3 feet to the side...
sometimes, it pays to be a geek and have 7 PCs in your bedroom...

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Me? Not that geeky. I'd have to ask around my friends to see if anyone has a unix box I can use.

*sigh*