[gmoney]

Hey computer experts here... I accidentally dropped my external WD hard drive. it only fell a few inches onto my carpet, but it was enough where now I can't access my music. So I thought about slaving it on my desktop, like I have done in the past with IDE drives, but it's proving difficult.

I purchased a SATA to IDE adapter, as well as a SATA PCI card, and no luck; the drive isn't detected in My Comptuer, or in BIOS. Is it because I'm connecting it to a MB that's just too old? Is is a drivers issue?

How can I try accessing my SATA drive from this PC? Thanks!

[asian010]

did the hd make a clicking sound when u used it after the drop? wd external hard drives have a tendency to not work after a drop, or even after just a period of time. can you tell us the exact model and specs of your external hard drive?

[BeeEmDubU]

Was the hard drive in operation when it got dropped?
BTW, it's not just WD hard drives that dont work after a drop. It's all hard drives. The head probably hit the platter.

[gmoney]

Originally Posted by asian010

did the hd make a clicking sound when u used it after the drop? wd external hard drives have a tendency to not work after a drop, or even after just a period of time. can you tell us the exact model and specs of your external hard drive?

I'm sorry, I made a mistake. The drive is a Seagate.

Yeah, after I plugged the drive back to the PC (still in the enclosure) via the USB cable, it made some light click noises.

Now that I've taken out of the enclosure in my attempt to install it on a desktop internally, it doesn't seem to be spinning at all, or powering on.

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.

[gmoney]

Originally Posted by BeeEmDubU

Was the hard drive in operation when it got dropped?
BTW, it's not just WD hard drives that dont work after a drop. It's all hard drives. The head probably hit the platter.

Well, it wasn't transferring data, but it was connected to my laptop, and this particular model doesn't have a on/off button, thus once plugged in, it's spinning.

[asian010]

its possible u got the click of death.

[UltimateBMW]

There are some pretty extreme data recovery methods you could think about pursuing. But they are alittle costly I think for just extracting the data off the harddrive. They are also not guaranteed to work.

Just to be thorough, have you tried to hook the drive up to a different computer yet? Possibly a computer that hasn't interfaced with it before. This is a long shot, since it has nothing to do with the mechanical nature of the problem. But its worth a try just to make sure that it is truely non-responsive.

What is the space capacity of your Seagate 7200?

[UltimateBMW]

As a follow up, the cost of using a data recovery service is around $800-$1200. So unless its like highly classified files you need, I wouldn't recommend this method.


Another "home" remedy that some poeple seem to have luck with is freezing your harddrive. Yes, putting the drive into your freeser for about half a day. It sounds odd but apparently it makes drives work.

Here is a link with alittle feedback on the method.
http://digg.com/hardware/Freeze_your...th_or_Reality_

Also found this little paragraph about it.

OK bear with me on this one. It's going to sound like crap but here me out. Freeze the drive. Its already dead so you have nothing to lose but heres what you need to do. Place the drive in a sealed bag and get as much air out as possible. Vacume seal if need be. Then have your case open and ready to recieve the drive. (remove the drive from its casing because its removable.) Now quickly insert the drive into your computer. For some reason this seems to reset the heads in the hard drive to allow for some time of use. It is completely temporary and after words your drive will not boot again. So leave it in the freezer for up to a half a day before attempting this. Good luck with recovery.

I'll mention again that this is a complete last resort method. And has the potential to completely kill a drive. But if your drive is dead already in the first place then you aren't risking too much, eh?

Good luck! I'll post more options if i think of any.

[UltimateBMW]

Here is a excerpt with some other data recovery options you could try before attempting the freezing method.

From: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...-when-you.html

Friday, December 16, 2005
Hard drive recovery utilities: when you can't afford to lose that data
Just imagine this: you've been working on that important paper for the past 2 weeks, and you are just about to finish it. The deadline is in a few days. You save your document, go for a coffee and when you get back, your screen is black. Your computer rebooted itself automatically and is now stuck in the bootup process with a message similar to this: No boot device, please insert a bootable media. You try to restart your computer a few times, but it does not fix your problem. At this point, it's important do stay calm, don't PANIC! There may hope yet!

First, you'll have to make sure that your problem isn't related to something else then the hard drive. The failure of your hard disk controller may also be causing this. You could always try to switch your hard drive from IDE1 to IDE2 and see if it fixes your problem. If it's not, remove the hard drive from your system, and bring it with you to a friend's house. If it still doesn't work over there, then you know what the problem is.

The only solution to your problem now is to use a data recovery software, like PC Inspector File recovery. This application is completely free, and it works beautifully. It helped me once or twice in the past few years. Don't make yourself any illusion, it's not perfect, and doesn't work all the time (Like any other hard drive recovery utility). Sometimes, data cannot be recovered out of a broken hard drive, unless you are ready to take your disk to a specialized recovery shop and pay 1000's of dollars to have your data recovered.

While being at your friend's house, install your HD as a secondary device and start the computer. Be sure that the drive is seen in the startup process, because PCinspector will not work if you are having mechanical problems with the disk drive or If it is no longer recognized by the BIOS. Head over to pcinspector.de and download the utility. The software supports the most popular file systems on the market: FAT 12, 16, 32 and NTFS. To be able to use PC INSPECTOR File Recovery you will need a working Windows System. Never install it on the drive from which you intend to recover data! The software must be installed and run on a second, independent drive (Amazon.com has many affordable hard drivesif you need one!). When you are done, the utility is very easy to use. Just let the application extensive HTML tutorial guide you through all the steps. I hope this little hard drive recovery how-to could help you. Hopefully, the application will let you recover your data.

If after trying this, you still are unable to recover your data, you can always ask experts to do the job for you. The folks at DTIData and at the RAID Data Recovery Group can probably help you get your data back, no matter how damaged your drive is. Here are the specific pages on their sites concerning hard drive data recovery solutions:

DTI Data Recovery
Hard Drive Recovery Group
Here are 2 great articles about hard drive recovery. Read them!

Beginners Guides: Hard Drive Data Recovery

Data Recovery Myths

Edit: After writing this article, several readers wrote to me about the knoppix Linux distribution CD. This bootable CD has the ability to mount and read FAT, FAT32 and NTFS partitions, even damaged ones. So after your HD crashed, you can always use this to recover your data and back it up on a USB key or second HD.

Knoppix can be downloaded via This location.

This site has some VERY complete instructions about how to use Knoppix to recover your lost data, so I won't have to write about it.

Some people seem to think that if your hard drive has some mechanical problems, you can try putting it in the freezer for a few hours. Check out the discussion here, I'd like to know what you guys think about this. There are already ALOT of comments over there, so if you guys are curious about this solution, check it out!

And here is this same guys look on freezing a drive.
The source page has pictures on it that help show and explain what happens.
http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...over-data.html

Freeze your hard drive to recover data: Myth or reality?
About 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article about hard disk recovery that was quite popular (I received approximately 20000 hits for it). The article covered a couple of solutions to help you in the case where your hard drive would stop working. While I was doing some research for this article, I ended up on a few stories about people who were putting their HD in the freezer to help fix it long enough to be able to recover their data. I guess that by doing this, some metal parts in the HD could contract, putting back in place defective parts, and making everything work again for a few minutes.

What do you guys think? Myth or reality? It seems that a lot of people agree that this solution actually works, so I decided to test it myself with an old Maxtor hard drive that failed me a couple of weeks ago. There was no important data on there, so losing the disk didn't really bother me.

Before putting it in the freezer, the drive was making a weird clicking noise, and the computer was showing me this message: Primary hard drive 0 not found, strike F1 to retry boot, F2 to run the setup utility

I removed the hard disk from the computer and sealed it in a ziplock bag to prevent condensation.

After this, I shoved it in the freezer, and waited an hour.

I finally installed it back in the computer, closed the case, and pushed on the power button.

YES! it works, the computer is starting correctly! Unfortunately, after I logged in, Windows froze and I wasn't able to do anything. I tried rebooting, and....

Well, at least the hard disk spun for about 2 minutes before crashing again. Maybe that's not long enough to let me recover any data, but it worked for a little while.

edit: The day after, I shoved the hard drive back in the freezer for 24 hours. After getting it out, I was able to get 20 more minutes of life out it.

If you don't want to risk losing you data and are afraid to try this out, you can always ask experts to do the job for you. The folks at DTIData or at the Hard Drive Recovery Group can probably help you get your data back, no matter how damaged your drive is. Here are the specific pages on their sites concerning hard drive data recovery solutions:

DTI Data Recovery
Hard Drive Recovery Group
And in the end, if you cannot do anything and need a new hard drive, Shopzilla has a great comparison engine that can help you find some very cheap ones.

Good luck.

[gmoney]

Originally Posted by UltimateBMW

.

What is the space capacity of your Seagate 7200?

It's 320 GB.

But, why wouldn't the adapter work so I can connect to my IDE only PC? Also I was thinking of trying to make it a second hard drive on a different PC that has more than one SATA connector. What do you think?

[UncleWede]

If you damaged more than a head in the drop, the drive would not be found because it didn't respond in a timely manner. No amount of adapters will help that.

There is a very special caveat to the freezer trick, in my experience. Yes, it really can work, but you have to be ready to move files quickly. The cold reduces the size of the head slightly, sometimes just long enough for the platter to spin up and get you some data. But you have to put it in the freezer NEXT TO ICE CREAM. Your mileage may vary.

[AllydNYC]

Originally Posted by UncleWede

If you damaged more than a head in the drop, the drive would not be found because it didn't respond in a timely manner. No amount of adapters will help that.

There is a very special caveat to the freezer trick, in my experience. Yes, it really can work, but you have to be ready to move files quickly. The cold reduces the size of the head slightly, sometimes just long enough for the platter to spin up and get you some data. But you have to put it in the freezer NEXT TO ICE CREAM. Your mileage may vary.

Never heard of that trick before. Sounds like it would work.

Here's a link for more info on it: http://www.trap17.com/index.php/hard...ck_t26193.html

[OC Guy]

The SAN admin at my work mentioned the freezing drive trick if all else fails the other day...