Help: My media hard drive seems dead

[GuysInCT]

I've been using HMO since the beginning, and had ripped all my 1200+ CDs, and stored all my digital photos on it. I have now learned my lesson, but unfortunately I do not have a backup of most of the digital photos (luckily I do have the music on a second hard drive).

Here's my question: is there any hope of rescuing the data from this hard drive?

It's a Western Digital 200 mb drive. I tried all the WD utilities, I've booted in Linux and can't see the drive. I just get some clicks, and then nothing. It's still under the three year warranty (barely), so if I send it in, I should get a replacement. But then the drive is gone for good. If there's any hope at all of saving some data, I won't send the drive to WD.

Any suggestions? Or have I just learned a very important lesson the hard way?

[DVDerek]

Yes, I would say with a certainty that the data on your drive can be recovered. I've never heard of a hard drive failure where data could NOT be recovered. The issue? Cost effectiveness.

At my last job, we had data on numerous completely failed hard drives restored. This came at a cost of around $1000/each. Now, I'm guessing your failure isn't as critical as ours was. I'd try and find a local computer shop and ask them if they or anyone they know of performs data recovery services.

If you want a few more tries at it yourself, I can offer a couple of tips that have worked for me in the past.

1. Try running the drive at various angles. Propped up on its side, upside down, etc.
2. Try Putting the Drive in the Freezer for a bit and then giving it a shot.

Don't ask me why #2 works, but it has bailed me out at least once. The tricky thing is that even if you are able to boot and see the drive, you may have trouble keeping it alive long enough to copy the data. Good luck.

[xnevergiveinx]

yeah, i've done the freezer trick on a couple of drives. it worked on one of them.

i have had plenty of drive fail on me, thats why i make multiple backups of sensitive data and keep it on different mediums (other drive, flash, dvdr, tape, offsite server)

i recently had my system drive die on me. out of the blue, a 4 year old maxtor fireball (40 gigs) dies on me. i didn't lose much of anything, because i have my system backed up into an image file. so i put in a new drive, loaded the image and 5 mins later i was back up and running. the drive spun up fine, but it wouldn't get recognized under anything, i tried all kinds of hard drive utilities.
i've seen hard drives that just click like crazy, ones with smart errors, ones with bad sectors, etc. they are really sensitive and can fail at any time for any number of reasons
i wouldn't bother with hard drive recovery service. it will cost way too much.
years ago i lost everything from one drive and it really set me back for a while. i learned to religiously backup.

[GuysInCT]

Thanks for the suggestions - I'll try them both. For the freezer idea, how long in the freezer?

[DVDerek]

I dunno - I usually put it in there for 30-45 minutes or so.

[greg_burns]

Don't put it in hot!!! I did that at work last month and had to defrost the whole freezer to get it unstuck. :D :D

Edit: forgot to add... but it did work. Was able to copy the data off. Had to do it quick, as soon as the drive warmed up it stopped again.