| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/15/2007 10:28:41 AM | in addition, those that like to forcefully turn off their computers, or not wait till the HDD locks its head, are just asking for problems from the disc. the pickup head rides on a very-very thin air cushion, and when you turn off the machine, power it down or unplug it without giving the HDD time to 'Park' the head, the head slams down on the platter causing scuffs and scratches that over time cause undue wear and tear on the drive internals. HDD's typically last 10 years +, if they're running 24/7 expect them to last between 3 and 5 years, if you continually power them off or unplug them without parking the head, your drive will last less than a year.
Maxtor drives have the best running life but suffer from alot of f/w screwups.
Western Digital have the second best running life and too suffer from f/w screwups, but are less likely to lose data in a trouble situation due to the small buffer size. Maxtor often lose data in trouble situations because they have large buffers. and Seagate are garbage all the way around, and often burn out from overheating. I usually kill a HDD every 12-18 months, and NEVER have i seen smoke, or ever heard of smoke being emitted from a HDD, so don't look for smoke, theres no where ont he drive for smoke to be emitted except from the exposed logic board, that doesn't have anything on it that would ever get hot enough to make fire which = smoke ;) | |
|
rowlie
|
Joined: 5/18/2006
Msg: 27 | |
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/15/2007 12:55:24 PM | IF your puter is domestic then weep and lose the data. If not or you want it,do the Knoppix route. No money- you get to a friends puter and look up how to put in a new HD. The next time you give yourself a nice dual boot W/Linux sytem. You get a new learning curve from learning Linux. And as an OS it is well sweet!
Put all the screws for the components into separate labelled pots, use a dig cam to photo what you are not sure of. In an hour you should be able to totally dismantle your laptop, refit a new HD and put it back together fully working. Then have a drink 'cos little else will phase you! It's only a filing cabinet after all and I doubt very much if most, and you, have the expertise to trash it totally. | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/15/2007 2:23:40 PM |
The next time you give yourself a nice dual boot W/Linux sytem. You get a new learning curve from learning Linux. And as an OS it is well sweet!
From the sounds of it he's an end user, not a geek or even a wanna be geek, no for the standard person telling them to install or use linux is a bad idea. It will scare them and upset them to the point of taking the thing back or going back to windows.
As much as i agree Linux is a very powerful OS if setup right, for 90% of the population it is still a bad idea. | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/16/2007 1:09:59 AM |
Maxtor drives have the best running life but suffer from alot of f/w screwups.
Western Digital have the second best running life and too
Wow. This shure isn't what I've seen. I asked around to my friends and they all agreed they'd all seen all drives fail and had seldom seen a WD work. Are you talking about IDE? I'm not even sure it WD and Maxtor even make SCSI drives
I'm not sure its fair to say seagates run hot. Drives that push the limits of available technology get hot. An IBM DDRS drive runs cool, it's understressed, a DDGS drive runs hot, it's pushing the limits of the technology at the time.
In big drive arrays I see I see more seagates than anything. (fibrechannel and scsi) | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/16/2007 4:22:38 AM | Having had a lot of experience of data recovery,with the disk being inaccessible I'd strongly recommend against writing any more files to the disk if the data there is vital.Personally I'd go along with either using a live Linux cd or a BartPE Windows boot cd such as Ultimate boot cd for windows.This will allow you to access the drive and with the built in cd burning capability,you can then copy the vital files,or to a usb drive if you don't have a burner.Even if the filesystem is damaged and the drive is still inaccessible you'll have the best chance of fixing the error.
In the unlikely event that you still can't access the drive,you'll need to slave it onto a working system and use data recovery software,which will read the raw data and doesn't need there to be a recognisable filesystem on the drive.There are some good free recovery utils available such as PCI File recovery:
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
Once you have safely backed up your files then is the time to attempt to recover the system,in the knowledge that if it fails you can always do a fresh install. | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/18/2007 4:31:14 AM | | Happened to me before. If you have the Windows disc try reinstalling windows and when prompted, create a partition. Hopefully you have enough memory. If you are successfull, my suggestion is to get an external drive and transfer the data you need because more than likely it will crap out again. | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/18/2007 8:38:46 AM | Have to agree with rsx11s, Maxtor and WD are no longer the 'go to' guys for hard drives.
I used to buy exclusively Maxtor until they started failing regularly, especially the medium to large size disks, both pata and sata.
I now buy seagate and I haven't had a problem. The 7200.10 are very fast, cool and quiet and I haven't had a failure yet, where I would have been expecting and prepared for at least one if I had maxtors. | |
|
| |
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/18/2007 3:32:16 PM | | just perused the other answers. I realized that they seem to be thinking you can get all your data on to a floppy disk, but if you need more space you could try a DVD Rom, I keep a pack around for disasters and such. They are like a DVD ROM but don't need any extra software to write. | |
|
| |
| |
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/18/2007 7:46:30 PM | Did anyone of you see a repost by the OP?
If he tried all your suggestions, then he is overloaded with information and is probably sitting with computer parts all over the place in a stuporous state of confusion.
First - you have to ask what O/S
Second - if it is Windows 2000 or XP, what file system? Fat32 or NTFS
If it is a MAC, then read page 1 from a guy who described that process.
The easiest way is for him to find a computer running a similar system that is equipped with a CD or DVD writer, then get a HD case that connects to USB wherin he loads his defunct HD. Now he can retrieve the data as long as it is readable.
My take is he wants his files off of it.
If nothing reads, then he needs an expert on data recovery who has the tools necessary to recover data off a bad disk. We did that at work for a cost of $500 but it worked. | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/18/2007 9:26:02 PM |
I used to buy exclusively Maxtor until they started failing regularly, especially the medium to large size disks, both pata and sata.
I now buy seagate and I haven't had a problem. The 7200.10 are very fast, cool and quiet and I haven't had a failure yet, where I would have been expecting and prepared for at least one if I had maxtors.
Seagate bought maxtor. Now that they are merge, they're trying to increase the performance on both sides. I never had any problem with Maxtor or Seagate | |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/19/2007 2:54:37 AM | | As far as seagate....F em. I bought a seagate external and the thing crapped out. I called them and was advised by some guy who sounded like I was disturbing his nap that it would cost 800 dollars to recover the data. 8oo dollars for a 60 dollar drive, I think not. I was in limbo as I had recently converted over 400 Cd's to MP3 and was not looking forward to doing it again. The second option they offered is to give them a credit card number and they would send me another drive and I could send mine back after I received the replacement. Mind you this geezer is being very nonchalant about my predicament. I opted to have them send me another drive but I was damned if I was going to give them my credit card number. I purchased a pre paid visa card, called back and gave them the card number. In the meantime I could hear the drive spinning but it would not boot. I took a hammer to it and removed the drive itself from its case and put it in another. This took almost all of my day being that I had never done this work before. Eureka.....!!!. It worked. When the seagate replacement arrived I took a sledgehammer and pounded what was left of my drive into fine dust and put it in the return envelope. Needless to say when seagate called me to demand answers after receiving my package, I was just as nonchalant as the geezer I had spoken to. Of course they tried to charge the credit card number I gave them. Sadly for them, the funds I had deposited had already been spent on some rather exquisite online porn. F Seagate. | |
|
| |
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/20/2007 2:08:44 PM | http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
thankyou, I will try this on an old drive I keep in case I can recover
If you are careful about how you shut down and defrag when it starts to slow...it will last unless there are faults to it... 5% of hardware breaks down and continues to break down.
My present one is a 6.1 gig and I leave it powered on all the time. I have had it a long time... augmented by a larger drive of course but it does contain the O/S
| |
|
| My hard drive died....I need my info on that HD!!!!!!!!!! HOW?
Posted: 4/20/2007 5:34:52 PM | | You can also access files on your HD from DOS. It happened to me one time and using the DOS syntax I managed to save all of my text files onto a floppy. But the best way is to remove the HD and put it in another computer, just like it was explained above. | |
|
Home
login 
