HDD crashed [Need help]

[GEEK]

hey guys,

i need some help from you all. I had to face the ultimate tradegy 3 days back when my entire hdd crashed. it is not being detected not even in the bios. i had made some backup on dvds but still there was a lot of data in it. I will be giving it for recovery tomorrow where they will replace the faulty IC on the hdd and extract all the data.

Any ideas what else i should do to save my data??

[Vi2DoubleYu]

that you HDD board had been crashed. my solution try search another your friends HDD and replace with same board with your crashed HDD for backup your data. but the first you must change your IDE cable maybe there have prob too so cannot your detect your HDD hope that will help you just for recover your data bro.

[GEEK]

thanks Vi2DoubleYu

I tried all of that and lot more and finally i have given it for professional recovery

[Willi000]

Sorry to hear that but here is something that may help you:

What i did, once i had such a HDD crash, sounds a bit strange first, but it really helped !!!!!

So after many many years with no faults at all i had a HDD crash too, i just hit the pc-desktop cover with my foot when sitting at my desk. After some minutes there was a strange noise coming out of my pc and then i turned my pc off. When i turned it on again it didn't worked anymore. It refused to boot and even in the BIOS the HDD wasnt detected anymore. Although i do regularly backups i was sure there were up to 1 GB of new data that i havent made a backup of so far.

I tried to get it fixed with unplugging and plugging it in again, checking all cables etc....nothing helped. Also the drive seemed to make some strange loud noise even after a clean start.

I was really sad about the possible loose of data and i started searching on the internet about a solution without having to send the HDD to an expert company and paying 1000$ for a questionable result.

So here is the solution which actually worked for me and revived my HDD for about 5-10 minutes so i was able to recover the new data and copy it to another drive:

Take the HDD out of the computer, unplug all cables and then put it into a plastic bag and put it into the freezer. YES, into the freezer....the colder , the better. Not only in the refrigerator, put it into a real freezer and store it there for 24 hours.

So, next day take it out and immediately connect it to your computer. As long as the drive is cold frozen there is a good chance it will be detected in the BIOS and then you have up to ten minutes to recover your data until the drive gets too warm and will not work anymore.

This really works !!!!

If you can only use the drive for 2-3 minutes you havent cooled it enough, put it somewhere where it is really cold and store it there for some hours more.

So how can you make sure that you have the full 5-10 minutes for recovering without having to wait for the hdd to boot and to start windows or whatever, which could easily kill some minutes and then you wont have much time left for the recovering process ??

Well i had that trouble first too , i put it in the freezer then connected it via the IDE cable , booted the machine, ran the BIOS, which detected the HDD fine , booted the HDD , started windows, well and when windows was ready the time was up....the hdd got already warm again and refused to work anymore.

So the solution to this is: Get youself a little hardware tool which is called "Adapter USB 2.0 -> IDE+SATA LogiLink" or something like that. It should cost about 15 - 20 $ . With that tool you can connect an IDE/SATA drive via USB to your computer ( it should have its own powersource too ). With that tool you can connect your HDD to an already running machine so you wont lose anymore time waiting for the damaged HDD to get detected in the BIOS and to boot the operating system.

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So what you have to do :

Freeze your HDD in the freezer for atleast 12 hours , better 24h, the colder the better !

Start your PC and boot it until it reaches the windows/linux desktop, make sure that nothing is running which could disturb you during the upcoming recovery process like annoying antivirus software etc.

Connect the USB -> IDE/SATA adapter.

Get the frozen HDD out of the freezer and immediately !!!!! connect it via that USB tool with the running machine.

Now windows/linux? should automatically detect that a new HDD has been plugged ( via that USB ) and it should show up in the explorer after a moment.

Start recovering the data.

Remember you have only 5-10 minutes until the HDD will get too hot again and you would have to put it into the freezer again for another session.

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Well, i hope this works for you. For me it really worked and i was able to recover all the lost data without having to pay thousands of $$$ and let the recovering company see my love collection

Best of luck

Edited August 15, 2008 by Willi000

[cektop]

One attempt would be to get identical model of HDD, cut them open, and put your old HDD mechanical parts in your new HDD with working electronics

[ala_borbe]

the thingy with freezer worked for me too... more than once...

[Externalist]

This makes me wonder... Let's say I have a few dozen gigs of data on a broken hard drive, and the 'freeze trick' will have to be conducted multiple times to get all the data recovered. Instead of going over the same process over and over, would placing the PC/labtop somewhere very close to the freezer and plugging in the usb while keeping the HDD in the freezer with the door closed(if possible) or almost closed provide an infinite amount HDD access time?

I was just curious cause most of the articles explaining the freeze trick are based on the assumption that a HDD will function normally as long as the temperature of the HDD is kept low. Any thoughts?

[HVC]

I really don't know if the "freezer trick" actually helps.

It's something that borders on the realms of religion or magic for me, and i must say, i don't like either of both.

Does anyone have an actual explanation why such a trick should work? And if so, under what circumstances?

Edited August 17, 2008 by HVC

[tman]

as per

Willi000

So the solution to this is: Get youself a little hardware tool which is called "Adapter USB 2.0 -> IDE+SATA LogiLink" or something like that. It should cost about 15 - 20 $ . With that tool you can connect an IDE/SATA drive via USB to your computer ( it should have its own powersource too ).

I found that when you buy a hard drive enclosure case you get this adapter

I never had luck with the freezer trick on my busted drive

best of luck

-t

[Willi000]

Well the article where i found that freezing method can be found here:

*http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

I only added that part with connecting the HDD via USB to get some more minutes for recovering instead of plugging it the old way and booting from the damaged HDD.

For me that helped a lot during recovering of about 1 GB of data.....and there was still time left.

So this freezing method works sometimes for the "head-crash" type failures , which is the most common error, but surely you could also have just a problem with the internal electronics and if you are skilled enough you can try to replace that first as cektop mentioned above.

Here you can listen to damaged HDD's :

*http://web.archive.org/web/20070808171124/http://www.hgst.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/cffe836ed7c12018862565b000530c74/4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument

Well about that freezing method i think , it works cause during a "head-crash" the read/write head touches the surface . Normally the head is some billionthwhatever milimeter above the surface and never touches it. So after a head-crash happened the head is possibly to close to the surface so that during runtime, when the drive gets warm it immediately touches the surface again or gets so close that the mechanism refuses to work. And if you think of the small dimensions we are talking about here, even in the first second just after power-on the components expand just a little bit cause of electric power running through it or whatever ...in case of that failure already a bit too much. So with that freezing action you can prevent the head/surface mechanism to expand for some minutes until the drive gets hotter and hotter during runtime and the parts expand and cause that error again.

Well i am not a technician but thats how i explain it to myself

Edited August 17, 2008 by Willi000