Hard Drive went south

I recently have had problems with a 3-year old Western Digital hdd. Up till now its been running fine, but lately we haven't been able to boot from it. I put it into 3 computers at work that are good; with all of them, the screen just flickered on and off, giving me not even an error message.

I since have replaced it, but there are some photos that I'd like to recover from my old one if I can. Now when booting up with my new hdd as master and the old fried one as slave, not only does the computer not boot up at all, but in BIOS, niether drive is seen. The IDE configuration sees neither one, and gives 0 megs for primary master and slave; the bootup sequence only gives me options to boot in CD, floppy, or LAN. As soon as I unplug the old hdd, the new one is seen and i boot up just fine.

Would it make sense for me to create a pre-installed (CD) edition of XP or even Knoppix, in an attempt to recover data? Last time I tried looking at a drive that wasn't detected in BIOS, knoppix couldn't see it either (which really shouldn't be surprising). Got any other suggestions, apart from sending it to a company and paying $500 for the data?

 

I have a trick that has worked a few times. Put the hard drive into a ziplock bag, then put it into the freezer (the colder the better). Leave the drive in there for a day or so. Tear the side off the computer you want to use. Go and get frozen harddrive and hook it up. You should have about 30mins to get data off the drive before it heats up enough to die again. Repeat process as needed.

 

I think I would have to agree with Steve, although I always check a drive the hard drive manufacturer's utilities. A corrupt boot sector can make a drive "disappear" as far as the BIOS is concerned. Check the drive with the WD's utilities Lifeguard.
www.westerndigital.com/support

Dcrypter's method would be well worth trying, I just suspect that it may be an electronics problem rather than a mechanical problem.

Let us know if you have some success.

Matt

 

Thanks for both those suggestions. I will investigate them this week and be back with you as to which one did the job.

I have been playing with Linux, and GRUB has always caused bootup problems when I've rejected Linux for the umpteenth time. I always have to go back in with the recovery disk and run fixmbr. That very well might have been the problem, although the drive hasn't worked on other computers either. Anyways we'll see.

 

I did try western digital's lifeguard (the DOS version, b/c I needed it to boot as a CD/ISO). Even this wasn't able to detect anything with my bad drive plugged in, so right now, I'm taking dcrypter's suggestion and am gleefully giving it a time-out in the freezer. Even if I don't recover any data, at least I will know that I'm causing my hdd a decent percentage of the misery it has given me these last few days.

 

Most probably there is some problem with electronics. Your card may have some problem. If you can find the same model hard disk, you can swap the card & check if you can access the files.

 

Hey dcrypter, I did try your freezer trick but it didn't work. Nice one anyways.

rsinfo, by "swap the card" do you don't mean change the video card? Not too sure what card a hdd would have. Can you please elaborate? This is my first time working on something like this.

 

By card you are referring to the green plate on the bottom of the disk? Apart from the cost of the second drive, there would be little risk, b/c I have one dead drive now as it is. All you do is unscrew it and place it on the other drive?

 

Yes, that's the theory. Be careful when the screws are removed, there will be cables to the motors.

Ground yourself by touching some bare metal each time you work on it.

As Pete said, it needs to be exactly the same model.

Matt

 

And also be very careful when you put the screws back - don't overtighten them.

 

Fair enough. I think I've found a match on ebay, rather cheap. Can anyone let me know exactly what has to be the same on these two drives? It is a wd300 Caviar 30 gig drive, just like mine. What other numbers need to match? The speeds are the same (7200 rpm). At any rate, what more would have to be teh same? Just the model number? I would think that the s/n would be different for each.

 

Great. Thanks a lot, Steve. Actually, thanks to everyone who's participated in this thread.

 

Shoot the model numbers on this set in Ebay are different from mine. Since this drive is only 3-4 years old, one might come up, but not too likely--my 160 gig cost me only $40 after rebates--there's not much of a reason to for anyone to buy a 3-4 year old 30 gig hard drive, which means there's not much reason for anyone to take one out of a rig and sell it, either. Hmmmm... Folks, thanks anyways.

 

It would not be easy to find one. 3-4 years ago drives were 2mb Cache, then models were changed to 8mb.

Try a Google search for the model number. There are supply stores for older and specific parts. You may have to sift through the search results a fairly long way.

It may well be worth emailing the manufacturer, I'm sure they have had these questions before. You never know, they may be able to supply you with a replacement electronics board.

Keep it on a shelf and keep checking. There may not be any available today, but tomorrow or next week may be a different story, especially if it was a popular model.

Matt

 

I'm on the line with a rep from Code Micro as we speak. I'll continue searching--no, throwing the drive away doesn't make sense. Who knows where one might turn up--and a few months of baby photos retrieved from that drive will make wifey pretty happy as well.