Hard Drive failure - Data recovery?
My dads hard drive has just died, won't spin up and makes clunking sounds...I'm feeling pretty guilty as it just happened one day when I was home and he wasn't in. Was just happily browsing when beep..clunk beep..clunk once a sec for maybe five secs and I turned it off. As its his comp I don't want to attempt any fixing until he gets back later today so can't give a better diagnosis than that it crashes when getting to "detecting ide devices" while posting.
Does anyone know a cheap data recovery service? My dad hasn't ever backed up so there are about 10 years of digital photos, work and documents on it that he doesn't want to use.
becareful if bumping the drive
IF the postulation of the heads being held over the disk are correct and the disc has not spun up (unlikely) then the bernoulli effect will not help the read/write head float over the platter. If you listen to the sound of the drive the platter is undoubtably spinning. Since I believe the platter is spinning the possibility of a head crash, from jarring the head into the disk platter, would certainly jepardize the recovery of data, perhaps even irretrievably. For what would be lost this cheap and ignorant approach is a home brew and ill advised. Consult with an expert before "driving drunk."