Crashed hardrive!

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21
Strangely, the efficacy is well documented and accepted. the science behind it however is more elusive. I will leave this one to others to explain rather than just regurgitating Google.

22
I found the company that will diagnose the disk for free and decide whether it is a software problem which will cost from CHF900 worth or something more complex and hardware related failure which in this case will cost between CHF1350- CHF2500. Tomorrow I'm sending the disk to them.

As for doing it overseas there is no option for me because I need to return this disk back to our support line (most likely they will scrap it but it's a procedure to return the failed stuff in our company).

Someone mentioned that multiple efforts to reconnect the drive and try tonread from the it may further damage the disk. I heard such statement from other colleagues before that's why we stopped in vain and would rather send it to experts. I can connect the disk to external USB and the system only can see its ID but is not able to read sectors. There was also funny spinning and gritting sound coming out of the HD. That's why I decided not too force it any further...

Soon will know what can be done. Thanks for all the replies and suggestions.

23
seriously, try SpinRite for 80 bucks before sending this stuff around. You'd be amazed.

All it needs is that the disk spins up and that the BIOS sees the drive.

I have heard of dozens of success stories where this has saved the day.

24
I have never used a data recovery myself, but know someone, who did. I dont know what the original failure was, but her friends advice was to format the harddfrive to solve the problem and retrieve the data . When that failed, she asked me-

I told her to contact a data recovery service, and they did get most/all data back, for ca. CHF 300. That was in Denmark, ca 4-5 years ago, and with the information i have, it was not a hardware problem.

If the data are important enough, Kroll / Ontrack and whatever they are called, may be worth it.

Doc.

25
or you could suceed in destroying the rest of the data and make the platter look like this:

software programs are fine when you have some logical failure and you can recover data by simply extracting sectors.

if you have a hardware problem then you can make it a lot worse. you can often tell the nature of the problem by the sound the disk makes.

26
That ́s not a bad price at all.... that ́s about €150...Anyway, my GF just recently dropped her external and it just blanked out completely.. it cost her about €600 (For a mere 250gig drive) in Spain.

The company ́s name was " inforescate "..they did a fair job "disecting & rescueing" the poor thing. Maybe you could send them a mail and ask if they know some .CH connection???

If the HDD starts/powers up, I ́d recommend: Roadkil ́s Untoppable Copier. (roadkil.net I think)

Good luck..

27
I have heard many times about this trick over the years.

Anyone ever did it?

28
The freezer trick works in situations where the head has fused to the surface of the disk platters. By freezing the drive, the contraction of the metal may cause the head to separate from the disk.

But it too can be hit and miss. If the disk makes a repeating "clunking" sound, it probably is a fused head and then freezing can help you get the drive working for just long enough to copy data to another disk.

Sometimes, if the drive is just dead, you can buy a second similar disk and swap the PCBoards. If it's the PCB which is dead, this fixes the drive just fine (did this to one disk and it continued to operate for year afterwards).

29
Thanks for interesting replies. Today I got the diagnostic report with quote for c.a. CHF2000 (normal delivery) for the hard drive with one or more damaged heads. It needs to go to clean room to replace the broken parts and recalibrate the new heads.