hard drive crashed!

[imagerage]

My hard drive had bad sectors so I used scandisk to try to recover any file, I check back an hour later and scandisk froze and I can hear the hard drive clicking. This is so frustrating, besides sending it in to a data recovery service, is there any other way to recover the data?

[PeOfEo]

put it in the freezer for a while then try recovering the files again... I am serious. Also you might try a cd bootable os like konnoppix.

[imagerage]

I read about the freezer method, does that work a lot of the times? Someone told me if I freeze it and it doesn't work, I'd lose the chance of recovering the data even through data recovery services. The hard drive makes a grinding noise and does not get recognized in the bios.

[PeOfEo]

recorvering services cost insane amounts of money... they really are not practical. Unless you have something very very very very important you should not do it because you will be paying a very large sum of money for just a little data.

Yes, I think you should probably consider the freezer method.

It sounds like the bearings in the thing are shot if it is making an actual griding noise rather than a clicking noise. Unfortunatly one cannot just 'repair' a hard drive. Opening one up is almost certainly the death of the drive forever and any data on it.

[Mausau2000]

I use the freezer methiod at work but it dosn't seem 2 do much some times it does but not often invest in norton system works etc.

[Hunk]

I use Easeus DataRecoveryWizard (http://www.easeus.com/) to recover file.

[psychotesis]

I think the freezer trick is coincidental. My experience is that if a hard drive fails, keep a new hard disk on standby. Leave the failed drive as it is overnight, if you're as lucky as the freezer-boys and the drive wakes up, quickly backup your important data. Time and luck is the remedy, not temperature.

Think about it, a hard disk is typically working at room temperature. Why should a manufacturer make it work better at extreme climates. And when you take it out of a freezer, there'll be so much condensation on and maybe in the drive.

Data Recovery DIY - Freezer (http://www.adrc.net/data-recovery-faq/data-recovery-help-diy-tricks.html)

[Hemmer]

Backup thouroughly in the first place. lol.
Seriously though, when mine started making funny noise (like an angle grinder :eek: ), I took backups straight away - so glad I did - the whole thing died just hours later, painfully with family close by...

[in1337ened1]

I've never heard of the freezer meathod. Although, I do agree with backing up.

[PeOfEo]

I think the freezer trick is coincidental. My experience is that if a hard drive fails, keep a new hard disk on standby. Leave the failed drive as it is overnight, if you're as lucky as the freezer-boys and the drive wakes up, quickly backup your important data. Time and luck is the remedy, not temperature.

Think about it, a hard disk is typically working at room temperature. Why should a manufacturer make it work better at extreme climates. And when you take it out of a freezer, there'll be so much condensation on and maybe in the drive.

Data Recovery DIY - Freezer (http://www.adrc.net/data-recovery-faq/data-recovery-help-diy-tricks.html)
ziplock bag? Freezing is not an extreme condition. Drives can run fine at freezing, its when you try to run it at -30c to -40c that it will really be failing. Temperature is something to consider due to thermal expantion and contraction.

[deweydesigns]

i've heard of the freezer method as a last resort.. same with dropping the hard drive about 3 feet off the ground flat.. will knock loose any stuck heads..

k i've got a dead hard drive that has been formatted...lol. i need about 40 gigs of crap that got formatted off it. it makes a camera flash sound and locks up the computer if i try to use it... any ideas?

[DaveSW]

I use the fridge for 3 hours. It's worked 5/5 of the time.

Think about it though - data recovery firms want your business, they don't want you to fix it yourself, so they aren't going to recommend a simple technique that stops them getting business.

[PeOfEo]

i've heard of the freezer method as a last resort.. same with dropping the hard drive about 3 feet off the ground flat.. will knock loose any stuck heads..

k i've got a dead hard drive that has been formatted...lol. i need about 40 gigs of crap that got formatted off it. it makes a camera flash sound and locks up the computer if i try to use it... any ideas?
Do you over clock at all? What kind of format was it, was it a quick format or did the drive get low leveled? Because if the drive was zero'd the data is gone... but if it was a quick format you might be able to grab the data from a cd bootable linux distro if the drive can be detected and operated.

[deweydesigns]

i don't over clock... it was fat32.. and it was a quick windows format. NOT low level. i have a ubuntu distro.. can i use that? if so, how would i go about it?

[PeOfEo]

Well that ubuntu distro that you have would need to be the live cd, if it's not I would reccomend downloading the ubuntu live cd from their website or downloading knoppix. Just running it should allow you to view the contents of the drive tmk, then you can just move the contents of it over the network or burn them to a disk.

[deweydesigns]

that sounds great. that explains how to get it off.. but what about the drive not working? remember, it makes a camera flash sound and dies...

[PeOfEo]

You're just going to have to pray about that bit. I guess you can try to freezer method talked about in this thread, but you might also put the drive in another system and boot from the disk on that, it might give you a little bit of time to retrieve the data before the drive bites the dust.

[deweydesigns]

well i had it as a secondary drive.. and it takes about 10 seconds once in windows.. b4 i hear that fateful sound.

[smartvish]

I would suggest to get a windows OS installation CD and try to boot your comp from the CD and then install a new Windows in another partition of the hard disk ..once you have new windows install ..then you can boot your comp and access your hardisk ....

[deweydesigns]

well i would but that would denegenerate even further my chances of getting the old data off.. because i would be writing new files over the previously formatted files.. and those are the files i want.

[trriangle]

Greetings,

You can try out some data recovery tool to restore files, then perform backup tool. The one thing I suppose you will find useful in such a situation is a Boot Disk data tools set CD image. That posses partition recovery, restore, backup and erase tools. If you wish, you can give it a glance.
http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

[stlucia]

Data recovery does cost an insane amount! I have spent over $2000 before getting data back. Taught me to back up my data next time!

I will tell you that a friend of mine has used a company that offers no data no fee and does not charge to look at the drive to see if it can be recovered.
It is www.rewave.com. They performed her data recovery for under $1100 and shipped it back to her for free.

Good luck! Watch out for the freezer- it might turn into an iceberg! :)