Hard Drive gone - data gone?
 

Hi there Guys.

A friend of mine asked me the other day to have a look at her PC as it did not want to boot. No problem, I thought - fdisk /mbr will fix that.....

Turns out that was not the problem. The HD is not detected by the bios at all. Tried more than one PC; no go.

So is the data on this drive lost or is there still a slim chance to get the data off the drive?

Help much appreciated.

Cheerz
Dave

I'm sure that you checked all the basics on the drive first... what about the cable? Did you use the same cable when you plugged it into the other system? Can you hear the drive spinning when you power up the computer (i.e. is the drive getting power)?

If the motor on the drive failed then getting your data off of it will be a challenge. For sensitive or important data companies pay hundreds of dollars for data recovery. It is almost allways posible to get the data back, but how much are you willing to pay for it?

The freezer (no pun intended) has worked for me on two drives, both IBM Deskstars. Wrap it in a freezer bag and stick it in the freezer for several hours until it is really cold. Then put it back in the system and try it. I use a caddy to make installing it as quick as possible. Then cross your fingers and fire it up. It's worked for me and allowed me to get data off the drive. Each time it was the mbr that was defective and a repartitioning and reformat seemed to clear the problem, but I never trusted either drive again.
Hope that's helpful. :)

Nice tip freezer121 :)

/JD

What type ( make/model ) of harddrive is this ?

Set it as a slave with the jumpers in the correct place and install it correctly in another computer.Then do as "freezer121" said by placing it in the freezer overnight, I have used this method before and it worked for me. That is the best and cheapest way for it to work again. If you are able to recover any files do it quickly then SCRAP the drive cause its gonna quit again.

Thanks
Dudelive

Thanks for all the suggestions. Will pop the HD in the freezer tonight. Will let you know how this pans out.

@Bearcat, it is a 2001 model 20 Gig Fijitsu HD.

Cheerz
Dave

Let me guess : Its one of the "infamous" MPG models ?
Some 300.000 of them has been dying....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09...ds_warranties/

Look here and see if you can get any closer to solve it
http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archive..._blues_part_3/
http://forums.storagereview.net/inde...788&hl=fujitsu
I have been able to "repair" 1 of those, using the "slave" metode and a firmware upgrade on the drive, in addition to "Fujitsu MPG series HDD Recovery Tool".

The 2. I have tried to look at, I gave up...

@ Bearcat, I owe you big time! Yes, it was one of the "infamous" MPG models, the 10 gig one to be exact.

With your info I managed to get the Fijitsu recovery tool and I could, after using it, see the hd in the bios again. Quickly ghosted the drive to another before it was to late.

So with your help, I could save all the data. Thanks much. Really appreciate it. I owe you. ;-)

Cheerz
Dave

Now I know where "freezer121" gets his nick from :)