Dead HD

[BippyM]

I just found same drive on ebay for £5 (£7 p&p) but it has 2 days left.. i'm watching now

[poohbear]

If it's not spinning, I would certainly try the freezer trick, because the head might be stuck, and the change in temperature / shrinkage may be sufficient to get it going once. It goes without saying, that if it does start again, then make sure you copy everything off immediately and then don't rely on it again!

Good luck.

[BippyM]

Originally Posted by poohbear

If it's not spinning, I would certainly try the freezer trick, because the head might be stuck, and the change in temperature / shrinkage may be sufficient to get it going once. It goes without saying, that if it does start again, then make sure you copy everything off immediately and then don't rely on it again!

Good luck.

What sort of bag do I need?

I'm not bothered about the tosec stuff I can get that again, and most the non tosec I can get again off the guys on here.... (In fact I have tosec backed up ) but I need to get some of the ISO's.. If all else fails Methanoid is returning that favour and restoring my HD (He had a copy of it a few months back.. Meth where are ya bud)

[poohbear]

Originally Posted by Shoonay

Damn, I've got a WD 300gb and Seagate 250gb SATA drives and one of'em is clicking randomly. Not very often, I usually hear a click sound - the same when turning the comp off - every 1-3 days. Both work perfectly all the time - after that click I usually go fast to my drives and browse a little deeper into the directories but they load normally...

Did you experience such clicking, Bippz?

Clicking isn't a good sign. In general, if you hear any of the following, it's time to migrate to a new disk

http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/knowt...c?OpenDocument

Also, keep in mind that navigating through a directory does not necessarily touch the same part of the disk that contains the contents of the files (for most file systems), so it's not an indication that your data is still available.

[poohbear]

Originally Posted by bippym

What sort of bag do I need?

I would guess a water-tight one. :-)

I haven't tried it, just heard enough convincing stories, so you should take a look around the web for suggestions.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=freezer+hard+drive

[BippyM]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1028112728

@poohbear.. thanks mate.. HD is sat in the freezer now.. will leave for 1 hour to see if it fires up, if it does i'llleave it 24hrs.. if not i'll get same model again

[poohbear]

Originally Posted by bippym

... if not i'll get same model again

I haven't seen any mention of it in this thread, so do you know that it's not necessarily the case that a drive motherboard from the same drive model will work with your drive? The manufacturers change motherboards but keep the same drive model number, as far as I know.

Looks like checking the stepping number matches is enough

http://www.wikihow.com/Swap-a-Hard-D...roller-Circuit

[Marcuz]

i don't know much about hardware, but i read recently about the report from that Google study on the hd they are using for indicization (>30.000 over few years) and SMART was pointed as to be irrilevant, as well as it was suggested quality of hd (they use cheap ones) is not a goal when coming to storage, while redundancy is.

however, about your problem, as it's much more the thermal difference than the just the temperature to affect the health of the hd, i would suggest to resort to the freezer trick as absolute last try.

[BippyM]

Ok I just took HD out the freezer and itr was daaaammmmnnnnn cold.. but alas was still completely dead

Looks like i might have lost what was on it, and hopefully meth will get back to me

[Methanoid]

Hi

Yes I have still prob over 75% of the stuff that Bip has lost and of course would be happy to put onto a new drive for him

I'd do the freezer trick as well. It worked for a friend of mine. It might get SOMETHING back.

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by poohbear

Clicking isn't a good sign. In general, if you hear any of the following, it's time to migrate to a new disk

Thanks for that link, really helpful stuff. I've heard those sounds usually with much, much, MUCH older drives - fortunetly none of them concerns my SATA ones...

Originally Posted by poohbear

[...] keep in mind that navigating through a directory does not necessarily touch the same part of the disk that contains the contents of the files (for most file systems), so it's not an indication that your data is still available.

Yes, I'd rather did that to check if my hd is still available in the system - since I'm on Vista I'd got a BSOD if the disk got "disconnected".