my hard drive took a dump. it's been making some clicking noises and gave some error codes, saying to run scan disk. well idid and now it says cann't find os.
and just makes consant clicking noise.

i started to download some of my pictures i had stored on it but didn't all of them, thats the only really important thing that i would like to recover. can any one help me?

YO!

*****STOP******

Unplug comp, get drive out, ship in insulated shipper to me, I get files off and either send drive back to you or strap M-80s to it.

I'm cheap

Well it sounds like the hd is hosed to me. All of your stuff is on there still but the hard drive is physically having such a hard time working that it can't read the OS. Your best bet would be to stick that hard drive in another computer and pull the info off of it. Then I would buy a new HD for your computer and start fresh from there. Hd's are pretty cheap right now, I think 200GB can be had for aroud $125 and it only gets cheaper the smaller in size you go. Good luck!:)
Eric

I have data forensics tools, time is your enemy now (hours running) since drives exponentially get worse.

Send it off while I'm still able to pull data off, took me over four days to get Zois' data, but I saved him having some dude drill through something to prove something else. I dunno, I dont care about people's data. I just like helping.

First off, if it isn’t dead it is close to it. Don’t keep trying to boot it as you may just make it worse

Do you have another machine that you can connect the drive as a slave (I’m guessing so since you’re posting here)? If so, go out (or download) some good Hard Drive Recovery software (I use EasyRecovery Pro but there are many out there) load it on your other machine then connect the bad drive (as a Slave or Secondary, you may need to move the jumpers on the drive) and see what you can recover (It's not rocket science, you can do it yourself).

Good Luck!

I did this last week for a friend. Do you have a recovery disk? Give me a ring tomorrow afternoon. I might be able to stick it in my wifes machine and grab your data. What kind of drive? ATA or Serial? Do you have all of the o/s disks and programs? Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.
Chris

i'd try the slave trick like Grimstead suggested.

if you have exausted all options then another trick is to put it in a ziplock bag and freeze it overnight. sometimes it will run long enough to get the data you want off before it flat lines for good. It is not a guarantee, but, skline and i have used it before and it works sometimes. if not, you have to go to a data recovery shop which is not cheap.

have another drive ready to copy that data fast. good luck.

and BACK UP YOUR DATA FROM NOW ON!!!!!!

thanks guys. i'll put it in the freezer and keep it there untill cris can get to it.
i'm just affraid that its a gonner allready 'cause of the constant clicking.

brit your next up if cris cant get anything.

i'm not using the pc, using laptop right now.

The HDD on my daughter's Gateway laptop just dumped last week. Luckily I had her back up all of her files, pics, and MP3s to our desktop computer at home. Took the laptop to Bestbuy and the Geek Squad guy said this was the 4th Gateway he's done in the last couple of weeks. Finally, one of those stupid service agreements paid off although the HDD only cost about $80 and the service agreement was like $250. So the score right now is Spoke -$170, Bestbuy +$170.

Moral of the story: back up your personal data often to some other media like a second HDD or another computer.

Spoke

The first step is to decide how important your data is. If it really matters, I'd say go with a data recovery service.

I would hold off on the freezer idea until you've explored your options thoroughly. When you pull it out, moisture is gonna condense (frost) inside, then melt. Okay, granted the drive is already toast, but you don't need to add more problems right now.

The situation right now is that all, or very nearly all, of your data is still on the disk, but either :

a) the hardware is broken and isn't able to read the data properly,
B) the system data that tells where your data is located is corrupted, or
c) most likely, both.

One problem is the more you run the disk, the more likely either (a) or (B) will get worse. The freezer idea, I think, is supposed to take care of (a); if something mechanically shrinks or an electrical part that is overheating can run just a bit longer, or something of that nature. The software people refered to takes care of (B) - it ignores where the OS thinks the data is supposed to be, and just scans the disk for anything that looks like a complete or partial data file. In particular, though, the software will access the disk in a strictly read-only way, so that at least you won't cause (B) to get any worse.

One option, if you have a real need/interest in getting the data back would be to find another disk drive of the same model (brand, part #). If you work carefully, you can remove the actual disk from the motor and install it in the good drive. Like swapping floppies, but with tools. I have heard of this technique working. This assumes that only (a) is your problem, but combined with disk recovery software could yield good results.

Good luck.

The motor isnt dying here, its the read/write heads which are under ONE mm from the surface. Ive been repairing compuetrs ever since my first 8088 in 4th grade (9 years old) and even "I" cant replace read/write heads. But I can use the dying drive, keep it temperature controlled and grab the remaining data off of it.

Just think, if the heads are messed up after trying to replace the platters (drive assembly is done in a clean room for a reason) you've got nothing.

You're data, not mine. My data is backed up onto a RAID array, it cost me well over 300 bucks for the setup, but I wouldn't do without.

You're data is archived into a zip (or tar) file, and burned to a CD. I did Mikez's stuff for free at that time...

OnTrack or Maxstor's Data Recovery service is thousands.

Last word i'll say here, if you need me e-mail me

Well said Britt. Even an old dummy like me knows that clicking noise is the heads clobbering something. The more you click, the more it clobbers.
Send them to Britt because the best of the advice has been seen.

MikeCool

Well I'm not saying i'm the end-all-be-all of data recovery. I'd do data recovery for 914 parts or for a In-N-Out Burger or three, I think the OnTrack clean-room guys want like 1500 In-N-Out burgers.

The best way is to buy yourself a raid control card and a couple of disks and mirror them. Then if a disk fails, you can replace the disk and copy the data back. Disks are cheap compared to losing all of your data.

RAID 5

I scanned all of the previous emails real quick, so I'm sure I'm repeating what has already been said, but that's just me- I'm lazy tonight. That being said, find another computer where you can hook it up as a secondary drive. My guess is that you'll be able to copy all of your data off of it with no problem. We deal with this all the time at work. If that doesn't work, send it to Brit.

BTW, if you have MAC lying around- they are great at detecting hard drives without all of the annoying bios configurations that you may have to do if you plug it into another PC as a secondary drive. Yeah, I know Mac and PC files are often different, but it doesn't matter- a Mac running OS 10 or higher will be able to "see" all of your files/folders just like a PC allowing you to burn them to a cd, usb drive, external hard drive, or even the mac's main hard drive so you can copy the data to anoher medium at a later time.

Good luck!

thanks guys. i'm going to try to get together with chris and see what he can do. [i'll give you a call tomorrow chris] and if no luck then to britt.

Troy this happened to me on the Garage computer just weeks ago!
You know what I did.... Pulled the drive and tossed it in the trash
CDRW drives are cheap and media is cheaper.
I know it dosent help you now but copying your data to CD or DVD every once in a while is cheap insurance.

I hope your drive still works if I get it...