Dead Hard Disk

[Dickie]

I bought a 1tb Samsung Spinpoint F1 at the end of September, and up to now it's been working flawlessly. Now though, it seems to be dead

For starters, here are the specs:

Mobo: ASRock ConroeXFire-eSATA2
CPU: Intel Core2duo E6300
2gb ram
There are 2 SATA HDs. I think the first one is a WD of some sort, but I can't remember what. It's the primary disc, and it's been in the system since I built it a couple of years ago. The Samsung disc is the secondary drive, and as I say the two have been working fine together for the last few months.
OS: Windows Vista ultimate (64-bit).

When I turned the pc on this afternoon, it took a long time for the bios to initialise and find my drives. After it finds the first HD, it stops for about a minute with the HD light on continually, and then after a while carries on to find my optical drives - the Samsung (which is a secondary drive) doesnt seem to be seen by the BIOS at all. Windows then doesn't see it at all either.

I've noticed that when the computer tries to find the drive initially, after a while theres a slight squeak sound that comes from the drive. After that, the pc seems to give up looking for it and carries on booting. This makes me think that perhaps there's a physical problem with the drive.

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be, and how to fix it? Or is there any possible way to recover some of the data off the drive before I return it? There's nothing massively important on it, so I'm not gonna pay to send it to a data recovery specialist, but obviously I'd rather not lose anything!

[Splash]

Any chance you can take an image of the drive? If so I'd do that as soon as possible and see if you can pull data off the image. Failing that try a linux livecd.

[Technogeek]

Take it out put it in a USB hard drive caddie and see if it will recognise it from there.
If it does not you will most likely have a bad drive.

Try disconnecting and reconnecting the cables first it might be a bad connection form your power supply.

[Dickie]

Take it out put it in a USB hard drive caddie and see if it will recognise it from there.
If it does not you will most likely have a bad drive.

Try disconnecting and reconnecting the cables first it might be a bad connection form your power supply.

I've done both of those things, still have the problem. I tried disconnecting my other HD as well, and that didn't do any good.

[hyenus]

run the spinrite application on it (grcdotcom) ... ive used it time and time again to bring back hd's from the dead (and on older critical machines as a preventative) ... it works like magic ;-)

[vinnyT]

Spinrite is excellent for reviving hard drives as hyenus says, the only prob is, it costs $89, so it cost more than some hds do, you have weigh up if your data is very important to you, then it is a great option to try.

[Animus404]

if you have a spare disk of the same model you could try swapping the PCB.. I did this with a disk some years ago just to get my data off.

[Maccer101]

Ok for checking sake, have you checked that the HDD is initialised in Disk management?

[Dickie]

Ok for checking sake, have you checked that the HDD is initialised in Disk management?

The BIOS doesn't even recognise the HD at all, so the OS doesn't have a chance! I've since tried it in another pc and get exactly the same problem, so I'm certain it's the drive thats not working, as opposed to the PC throwing a wobbly.

I'd imagine swapping the PCB over could work, but I only have one of these HDs so I can't try it. Other than that, all I can think to do is to get a replacement

[harshw]

The BIOS doesn't even recognise the HD at all, so the OS doesn't have a chance! I've since tried it in another pc and get exactly the same problem, so I'm certain it's the drive thats not working, as opposed to the PC throwing a wobbly.

I'd imagine swapping the PCB over could work, but I only have one of these HDs so I can't try it. Other than that, all I can think to do is to get a replacement

Well you might as well try putting the HDD in the fridge ( not the freezer ) in an airtight bag and with some silica gel for absorbing the moisture.

For what it's worth, my friend once had his Hitachi 2.5" die on him and it had important data. He did the fridge trick and it worked long enough for him to copy whatever data remained. Again, according to some people, this may also cause the HDD to degrade further so you gotta decide whether or not to do it ...

[Dickie]

Well you might as well try putting the HDD in the fridge ( not the freezer ) in an airtight bag and with some silica gel for absorbing the moisture.

For what it's worth, my friend once had his Hitachi 2.5" die on him and it had important data. He did the fridge trick and it worked long enough for him to copy whatever data remained. Again, according to some people, this may also cause the HDD to degrade further so you gotta decide whether or not to do it ...

It's worth a try. It doesn't work at all now, so got nothing to lose.

How long does it need to be in there for?

[vinnyT]

Leave it in for ~10 hours, make sure the bag is, as suggested, airtight.

When you remove it from the freezer it is important to get any data off it asap (it may not work again), just have the drive fixed to power and data cables (don't faff about screwing it to the case.

[Blastuk]

Leave it in for ~10 hours, make sure the bag is, as suggested, airtight.

When you remove it from the freezer it is important to get any data off it asap (it may not work again), just have the drive fixed to power and data cables (don't faff about screwing it to the case.

ASAP because condensation will start forming on the drive as soon as you take it out...

i think some people put the cables inside the bag and close it the best they can to give them extra time

[Zak33]

Now that you are in "it's toast, so I'll try anything" mode, may I suggest that you put it in another machine so you can use it as a slave and then whack it !

It may well work!

[jamin]

Your drive is dead. If there is any warranty left you can rma it.

At the end of the day, hard drives can fail with no warning or progressivly deteriorate, but they eventually will fail. If you lost data then shame on you for not backing it up. It's a tough lesson to learn, but many of us have had the same misfortune,

[Dickie]

The freezer trick didn't work.

But, I bought another drive (figured that I'd have to replace it anyway) and swapped the PCB over, and luckily that worked, so I've got all my data back.

At the end of the day, hard drives can fail with no warning or progressivly deteriorate, but they eventually will fail. If you lost data then shame on you for not backing it up. It's a tough lesson to learn, but many of us have had the same misfortune,

Yup, I hadn't backed it up. I think I'm gonna buy an external drive in January (sales...) and start keeping backups now.

Thanks everyone for the help