Hard drive crashed

[Jking72]

Like it says my hard drive crashed (weak) is there any way to make it work again or is it toast? My pc doesn't recognize it's even plugged in.

I bought a new 1TB drive and started over but my last backup was 3 months ago on my external hard drive. Otherwise everything from 2011 and up is gone.

Well that's my sob story.

[Ralphie]

Do you hear it spin up?

Im assuming its a IDE and not a SSD...

If you don't hear it working when it's plugged in, it's probably toast.

if it is spinning, then that's good.

I have an external that spins up but I can't get anything to recognize it.

It sucks, I have like 1100 pictures on there that are gone forever basically.

I got qoutes as high as 2,000 to recover it.

If it does spin up, I would try connecting it to a Mac and maybe a linux distro and seeing if they can recognize it. Sometimes Windows drivers are weird.

Outside that, I have no other help.

[Raf99]

So this depends on what type of HDD and what the current level of "broken" is. Assuming this is a IDE/SATA Windows HDD and you are using a Windows machine there are things you need to check. As Ralphie said you can try the below. All data on corrupt HDDs are usually recoverable unless the disk itself is physically damaged or lost its magnetic capabilities.

- check that its spinning up
- put your ear to it and listen for read/write action or skipping
- use disk management to see if the disk / partition shows up

If no spinning:
- take the PCB board off and verify the contacts are making a connection
- clean any connections if you can
- try a duplicate PCB board on the same HDD
- the goal here is to get it spinning

If spinning:
- determine if the disk shows up in any form on windows (disk management, unknown partition, etc.) use disk recovery tools to scan the sectors
- determine if the read/write heads are stuck on a sector (I have physically opened drives up before to unstuck a read/write head and or swap disks over).
- determine if the HDD can be read in other OSs


there are more drastic measure to take, but start here.

[cp[mike]]

a lot of times when a HDD is crapping out, you can hear obvious "bad" sounds coming from it. like a weird whirring CLICK. whirring CLICK. whirring CLICK.

I have had this happen to me many times... one time i actually bought a duplicate HDD used on ebay just to borrow hte circuit board from it to try.

Ever since, I keep 2 copies of everything.

[Jking72]

Do you hear it spin up?

Im assuming its a IDE and not a SSD...

If you don't hear it working when it's plugged in, it's probably toast.

if it is spinning, then that's good.

I have an external that spins up but I can't get anything to recognize it.

It sucks, I have like 1100 pictures on there that are gone forever basically.

I got qoutes as high as 2,000 to recover it.

If it does spin up, I would try connecting it to a Mac and maybe a linux distro and seeing if they can recognize it. Sometimes Windows drivers are weird.

Outside that, I have no other help.

ouch 2200 bucks. it doesn't do much, it clicks for like 5 seconds then doesnt do anything

So this depends on what type of HDD and what the current level of "broken" is. Assuming this is a IDE/SATA Windows HDD and you are using a Windows machine there are things you need to check. As Ralphie said you can try the below. All data on corrupt HDDs are usually recoverable unless the disk itself is physically damaged or lost its magnetic capabilities.

- check that its spinning up
- put your ear to it and listen for read/write action or skipping
- use disk management to see if the disk / partition shows up

If no spinning:
- take the PCB board off and verify the contacts are making a connection
- clean any connections if you can
- try a duplicate PCB board on the same HDD
- the goal here is to get it spinning

If spinning:
- determine if the disk shows up in any form on windows (disk management, unknown partition, etc.) use disk recovery tools to scan the sectors
- determine if the read/write heads are stuck on a sector (I have physically opened drives up before to unstuck a read/write head and or swap disks over).
- determine if the HDD can be read in other OSs


there are more drastic measure to take, but start here.

yes its a SATA, seagate barracuda 7200.12 500gb and it clicks for like 5 seconds and then nothing.

by clean do you mean re-solder or just wipe off lol...I'm not too techy but I can manage, plus there is Google.

a lot of times when a HDD is crapping out, you can hear obvious "bad" sounds coming from it. like a weird whirring CLICK. whirring CLICK. whirring CLICK.

I have had this happen to me many times... one time i actually bought a duplicate HDD used on ebay just to borrow hte circuit board from it to try.

Ever since, I keep 2 copies of everything.

you nailed it with the clicking, will have to look into finding a board for it and get a very small torx screwdriver.

will report back after I remove the board and inspect.

[illinois_erik]

like mentioned, try and find another controller board for the same drive and swap them..and..

there are some manufacturer specific utilities that might be able to write off the bad sectors so you can access some of the uncorrupted data.
There is also a program called HDD Regenerator Ive had luck with (2011 version on the warez circuit) other than that, theres a trick to put the HDD in the freezer..hook it up and extract the data before it gives up the ghost for good. good luck man

http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a...-freezer-redux






Also you might want to download some SMART monitoring tools so you can see what condition your other drives are in and what temps theyre seeing

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/

http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

and

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

all free.



oh yeah and SpeedFan which is just an awesome free suite with a buncha other stuff along with HDD smart monitoring and checking. Id go with this one first.

[cp[mike]]

The board swap is worth a shot, but don't get your hopes up. Once you've already concluded that your data is gone, then the freezer trick may be worth a shot (only as a last resort, sometimes it can permanently destroy the remaining data)

If you can get the disk spinning back up, hopefully the OS sees it. If windows doesnt, sometimes Linux might - there are "hard drive maintenance" versions of Linux that you can burn to a DVD and have it boot directly from there. Then running data retrieval tools (from whichever OS you end up getting the drive to spin up again in) and see what happens.

yes its a SATA, seagate barracuda 7200.12 500gb and it clicks for like 5 seconds and then nothing.

you nailed it with the clicking, will have to look into finding a board for it and get a very small torx screwdriver.

will report back after I remove the board and inspect.

My board-swapping experiences were years ago, with Western Digital drives. They had a great long running reputation, but a string of bad experiences drove me to try a different model hard drive.

I picked up THREE of those EXACT same barracuda drives, to run in a redundant RAID array (I learned my lesson!! so i thought). Well within just one year, TWO of the drives went bad, and I had to send them back for warranty replacement.

Now, with the frequency of how often these Seagate drives seem to die (a common problem - look online, they get a terrible reputation) and the very time consuming nonsense involved with rebuilding the RAID array every time, I have concluded to use the 3 drives, INDIVIDUALLY, as such:

Drive 1. My data
Drive 2. Duplicate copy of most of my data
Drive 3. Triplicate copy of important data, with the drive left disconnected, saved as a spare.

You might be able to send that drive back for a new one (you can check by putting the serial number into their website) but you may also want to consider looking at other brands (I know I sure will be in the future)

I have also switched over to Linux entirely, which seems to put WAY less stress on the disks. They dont seem to be sitting there, spinning endlessly, for no reason anymore. I also spaced the drives out and added additional cooling fans, and carefully considered the airflow in/out and around the computer itself. Those disks can get SCORCHING HOT. Hopefully they will last longer this time.

[Raf99]

Most HDDs will run through a scan of the disk during boot up as a self check. Most times one will have a sector of the drive which cannot be read and so the drive will back up and try again. This is the clicking sound you hear. This is the disk saying , reading..., reading..., reading..., oops-can't read, backup (click), and try again. And again, and again....

This usually points to physical damage to the drive or loss of magnetic capability on the sector. There isn't much one can do here, except tell the BIOS (of software) to ignore that sector. In the old days you would specify that the cylinders, heads, sectors (CHS) of the drive to a lower number to try and avoid the bad spot on the drive. Now there is software that can do this as well as tell the drive to ignore bad check (check sums).

Linux, as mentioned above has software and the capability to ignore bad sectors due to the dynamic low level access of its software. Software

[cloudasc]

Here is the link to Seagates Diagnostic tools, aka SeaTools

Here is what they say to do for: The BIOS does not detect or recognize the ATA / SATA hard drive

If your computer does not recognize the device, it might be possible to program in the cylinders, heads, sectors, etc for that drive to be able to access it.

Also have you tried different power cables or data cables during your diagnosing, and using a different port on your motherboard?

First thing I typically do with any drive that starts to fail, is remove it from the machine, and stick it in an external enclosure (I have spent anywhere from $10-30 for one) and possibly plug it into a completely different machine, which will tell you if the issue is isolated to that machine, or if it really is related to the drive.

The general rule I live by with Hard Drives, is to replace/upgrade them around the 2yr mark for any mission critical data or systems, beyond that timeframe I consider them a ticking time bomb, and make sure I have a backup somewhere of those items on another media/drive/system.

[cb9love]

how neat 2 days after this post my hard drive crashed on my laptop.
It was new too me but well used. I hadnt backed it up or put much on it.

[Jking72]

so I figured out how to get linux ubuntu installed and Im dual booting with windows 7, I can't seem to get these zsplit and unzsplit to install on ubuntu...so progress has stalled.

I'm waiting til payday to find a same board to do a swap.

seatools don't download for ubuntu.

new cables are in order too but has to wait til thursday.

[cloudasc]

seatools don't download for ubuntu.

Then download the DOS version, and make a bootdisk to use it. They provide instructions on their site.

[Jking72]

It's not the cables or the board and seatools in Linux doesn't find it.

I'm not sure I want to pay to have it professionally done, I might just get another external and be diligent with the back ups.


I might just try the freezer trick and be done with it.

Unless anyone else has some viable options.