HDD Craped out :mad:

It's a sad day today. My HDD craped out on me and I had some important excel and word documents that I forgot to backup. I can hear it clicking whenever I turn it on. I have no idea what to do, I am going to call Dell tomorrow, But I've got some questions. I am going to send the HDD into a data recovery service sometime this week since those files are EXTREMELY important, I need to get them saved!. Now this might take a while, and I heard that Dell will send me another HDD to replace this one. Now are they going to ask for the other drive? Plus what else do they need and how long will it take them to send me the drive?

Thanks

 

You can buy an HDD caddy and hook it up to another computer. Usually files are still retrievable from an HDD that won't boot, and it's a ton cheaper than data recovery centers.

 

I agree that putting the problem HDD into an external enclosure is a worthwhile course of action but if it's clicking and not spinning then it won't be possible to read the data.

Sometimes clicking indicates a shortage of power getting to the HDD. I would therefore suggest the first step is the remove and replace the HDD in the notebook as a way of cleaning / reseating the connections.

John

 

I've read from Notebookforum which may help. Read it carefully since it sounds like this will work only once more.

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=204907&highlight=hard+drive


P.S. Yes, Dell will ask for the HD back, unless you have "keep your harddrive" service like I do on my M90 .

You have 10 business days to return it, but I'm sure you can ask them to give you more days considering the situation. GL.

 

If it'll spin up, buy SpinRite and see what it says. It boots from CD. Otherwise, sending it off for data recovery is your only hope.

 

Plop that sucker in the freezer wrapped in a paper towel in a sealed ziplock bag for about 10-12 hours. Remove from bag and towel and QUICKLY stick it back in your computer. Fire up your computer. It may take a few tries, but it should load. If not, buy another hard drive of the EXACT model and get in a clean room and wear gloves/hairnet. Remove the platter from yours and replace it the the new drives. Stick that new drive with your old platter in your computer and fire it up. Either that or shell out thousands upon thousands for hd recovery services that will do the same thing!

 

A lot of people don't know how to install Windows or replace RAM. Doing this would be rocket science for even an accomplished tech.

 

When that much money is on the line, you can learn fast

 

Even if you were able to find a clean room, you would just screw up and render the data unreadable forever. There's a reason that stuff costs in the thousands.

 

Is this coming from someone who has tried this before?

I have and it worked both times and my clients were very happy.

 

You're a tech, and he's average joe. There's a difference when you ask a doctor to perform surgery than when you ask a random guy on the street.

I'm just saying, I would not recommend pulling platters to people on a forum.

 

point taken

 

Nizzy Suggestion does work some time but it depend on what issues you have with drive does not power up? if laptop will not find in then not realy go help usb hard disk case it always good option before try send it off

 

Bad, bad omen. Sorry.
My piece of advice is this: do not turn it on again until you have everything set to clone it. You might have a last chance to read some data from it and it'd be a pity to use it to try some exotic, untested recovery procedure.

So, if those documents are REALLY important to you, buying another disk of the same size, make and model wont' be much of an effort. Then you will have to clone it. I suggest dd_rescue, under a Linux environment.
Take your time to learn how to use and do some practice on another disk. It is imperative that you don't lose your time in trial and error.

dd_rescue won't do anything but cloning your harddisk, trying to read multiple times form bad sectors and not stopping when read errors occur. Once you have a clone of your hard disk you might want to try some recovery method to get your files back. You will work on the copy, of course. The original has to remain unscathed in case you mess up with the copy and need another, desperate, cloning.

I strongly advise you not to open the disk enclosure: a clean room is not a room where you have just dusted off the furniture, it's something that requires particular air conditioning and filtering to keep out dust particles bigger than a certain amount of microns. Nothing the average joe might have access to.

 

Dude, i swapped platters on my tech work bench...

 

I did a small Google search and found reports from other people claiming to have performed a working transplant in ordinary rooms. Doh!

It seems that the centrifugal force exerted on the dust particles acts as a sweep, autocleaning the surface. But you still have to be lucky enough not to have the heads on the way while there is still dust on the platters.

"It... could... work!".

It still is a very risky operation, to be used as a last resort when everything else has failed, but I stand corrected: experimental data must prevail over theoretical FUD.

 

what's the brand for that crappy?

 

Ditto!!!

Please post specs - at least make and model so that us readers can
compare and keep a tally on what seems to be failing most.

I have been keeping an eye on drive failures because when (not if)
it happens, I want to know what makes/models to avoid and which
ones are performing well.

 

What, exactly, does this, ah, procedure, do for the drive...? Are you suggesting that the drive's overheating during nominal operation and hence, cooling the drive down may help in that particular case...?

I'm with the posters that suggested doing a disk2disk copy. I suggest doing it in a DOS environment (vs. Windows) and connecting the drive directly to the SATA controller (vs. USB). I'm not even sure that you will be able to access an eSATA-connected drive in a DOS environment (I guess it depends on the controller's firmware, etc.)

Here's just one tool I found quickly Googling that may do the job. I personally have used a DOS-based tool that was part of Partition Magic (but I'm afraid I can't remember the name, sorry...). Finally, there's a good chance that the HDD manufacturer offers a (DOS-based) utility that can be used to do a sector-by-sector copy of (their) HDD.

Most importantly, best of luck in recovering your files, if not the [drive's] entire image!

P.S. Can anyone recommend any of the utilities listed at this website?

 

the freezer trick is a well known and time tested way to get data off a dying hard drive, just cuz you've never heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't work. in fact, i've never heard of it not working.

 

I never said that it doesn't / wouldn't work! You could have used the same time/effort/keystrokes/space on this thread to explain the how/why instead...

 

What I've heard is that bad solder connections inside the drive will move closer and make contact again if you freeze it. Of course once the drive heats up enough, it will quit again. Anyone know a better explanation?

 

Dude, that's some wicked $hit...

WAY COOL!

Rep comin' your way, even if you didn't get credit for the Whitepaper

 

i think this is why...sometimes the spacing between the reader head and the platter shrinks and this causes the head to crash into the platter. this is the clicking noise you hear as its trying to start. freezing it for a long period of time causes the actual metal molecules of the apature arm/head to shrink ever so slightly so that it does not crash into the platter again. Of course the drive will heat up again and cause the molecules to relax back to their old size, thus failing again.

 

Well, a bit less wicked as Chelet's theory but certainly no less scary...

 

yeah it is scary...but not as scary as seeing the network manager not make tape backups of a schools server and have 2 of the 3 drives in raid 5 fail together 1 week before school starts...this freezing thing did the trick, it was that or spend 25K on data recovery...

The point is, in this day and age, everyone knows hard drives fail. It is your stupidity if you do not have backups of your important information in more than one location. Personally, i have my laptop backed up on an external drive, backed up on an older computer, and backed up to an email account. All those aren't going go. I suggest everyone do similar as me, at least get an external hard drive or email yourself all your important documents. Your drive will fail too.