Hard Drive failure - Data recovery?

[Dark Horse]

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.

[0iD]

Try the 1" drop, sometimes works on old drives that get stuck, or hermetically sealing it & freezing it. That sometimes works.
Data recovery services are rarely cheap. I've never used one so I'm afraid I can't comment.

[Mike Fishcake]

There's the old favourite of freezing the hard drive. Most of the time it doesn't work, but it's worked often enough for us to try it (kinda like defibriliating really )

- stick the hard drive in an air tight anti static bag, preferably with a couple of sachets of silica gel, if you have any
- stick it in the freezer for a couple of hours
- connect it to another PC and pray to god

[iranu]

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.

Sorry to sound harsh, but this episode will teach him. As for the fix try keeping the drive on it's side whilst connected. This way there is less weight on the bearings. Hope you get lucky.

[Marcos]

10 years of digital photos, i think thats worth a professional data recovery service

But damn, i'd never trust a single hard drive with 10 years worth of good times

[Dark Horse]

There were 2 drives in there, one 20gb and one 60gb. It seems the 60gb main drive failed and everything on it is probably lost but at least the 20gb version is fine. Think it will have to be data recovery as he had some work on there and thats more important that the photos which I think were backed up to sometime earlier this year.

Would try the freezer trick but I'm not sure if it would jeapordise any chances of professionals saving the data.

[Dark Horse]

Turns out the failed disk is/was a Hitachi Deskstar, which I hear has been aptly called the Hitachi Deathstar.

Found a site with a recording of a hitachi click of death an yep, its a failed drive.
http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ibm-desk...k-of-death.wav

Oh well, had better investigate data recovery, best quote i can see is 250 squids...

[Mike Fishcake]

£250?

Sounds too good to be true, TBH. I hope I'm wrong though.

[Dark Horse]

It was from http://www.easyrecovery.co.uk

[Kumagoro]

i would keep searching for ones related to the deathstar although i thought it
was only for IBM ones. Ive seen £50 before im guessing it must just be a logic board swap. Whats the sound like clicking or clunking?

[SilentDeath]

You say it clicks and makes nioses but doesnt spin up? Thats common - and a known issue for rio karma mp3 players which iirc are hitachi drives.

What happens is the heads dont park properly when its switched off. They are suposed to spring to the side, away from the platters). When turned on, the dirve is suppost to spin up, before releasing the heads.

If the heads do not park, they will be over the platters. The incredibly small gap creates a surface tension between the head and the platter. The spindle motor is not powerfull enough to get the platter moving again. Tapping the back of the drive (or hitting while it is powered) can move the spindle enough to get it started again.

Read on the riovolution forums for the correct way to do it. Not sure if thats the correct thread with all the explainations of why it happens.. but its 21 pages..

If you can get it working again by this method, chances are it will eventually happen again, so good idea to replace it...

[qaz111111]

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."