hard drive dying... utilities to recover data?

[SofaKingBanned]

Drive's making funny noise, won't mount... any ideas?

[H8R]

Drive's making funny noise, won't mount... any ideas?

Does it go..."ssssip.......klink..klink..klink..klink.."?

[SofaKingBanned]

It's more of a crunching kinda sound.

Also, I put a new drive in my wife's laptop, reinstalled OS, and now can't find my wireless network. I do see many other wireless nets, but not mine, even tho I'm sitting with the notebook two feet from my router.

God I'm stupid.

[H8R]

It's more of a crunching kinda sound.

Also, I put a new drive in my wife's laptop, reinstalled OS, and now can't find my wireless network. I do see many other wireless nets, but not mine, even tho I'm sitting with the notebook two feet from my router.

God I'm stupid.

Ok, let's tackle the router first. The HD may be fubar.

What router is it? Do you have a cable to plug into it to set it up?

[H8R]

BTW - put the hard drive in a ziplock bag, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal it, then put in the freezer for one hour.

Re-install it and see if it mounts up.

If not, do the freezer thing again, but before re-installing it, tap it once gently on a table.

This tricked allowed me to recover everything on a secondary drive that I had given up on.

[SofaKingBanned]

thanks bro! Drive's in the freezer.

As for the wireless router... stupid me forgot that I disabled SSID broadcasting some months back. I enabled, connected, disabled and it's good now.


I'll try the frozen drive shortly. Should I let it warm up a bit first?

[syadasti]

thanks bro! Drive's in the freezer.

As for the wireless router... stupid me forgot that I disabled SSID broadcasting some months back. I enabled, connected, disabled and it's good now.


I'll try the frozen drive shortly. Should I let it warm up a bit first?

No you might have to do it multiple times if you have a lot of data and it warms up. Make sure its WELL sealed - maybe even use multiple bags when freezing it. You could also use it in the bag w/ice packs around it after its out of the freezer if you are careful.

[SofaKingBanned]

when I try to mount it in WinXP, PC locks up. I'm now using "Stellar Phoenix" to try to recover. Ugh.

[syadasti]

How are you connecting it? Do you have it configured properly as a master or a slave? Does your BIOS detect it on bootup?

[SofaKingBanned]

connecting via USB to an external hd case. Do I need to set it as a master or slave?

[syadasti]

connecting via USB to an external hd case. Do I need to set it as a master or slave?

Well if its originally from the external case you shouldn't have to change the jumper settings. I haven't put too many external HDD together, so I don't recall what the normal jumper setting is. I would just attach it to the computer's IDE chain as a slave with the case open if I was doing it.

[SofaKingBanned]

it was an internal drive on my lady's laptop, so I pulled it, put it in an external case and attached it to my desktop.

[syadasti]

it was an internal drive on my lady's laptop, so I pulled it, put it in an external case and attached it to my desktop.

Check the instructions that came with it, I don't know offhand. Did you ever get it working in the enclosure or is this the first time you are setting it up?

[SofaKingBanned]

Drive worked for a year in her laptop, went downhill fast. Bought an external drive today, pulled new drive from case, inserted into laptop, everything's running fine now, put old drive in case, put it in freezer, put it on top of an ice pack, crossing fingers.

[Trigger]

a drive that makes that sound is fubar for sure.
i diskcrash is just what it sounds like, the read/write head has crashed into the disk - usually because of impact while operating, and has knocked out a microscopic fragment of the disk.

Now this in itself is not the disc crash, but it's when that fragment either gets caught under the read/write head again - and start to rip into the disc, or if the read/write head picks up more of the disc where it's already damaged that you got a problem.

How a freezer can help, i don't know...and the chances of creating condensation on the external controllercards of the harddrive sounds quite big.....

[SkaredShtles]

Dude - quit screwing around with the drive and restore your $hit from your backup..............