Hard Drives

[CoM_Solaufein]

Is there any way to repair a hard drive or take it some where to get it fixed? A hard drive from my old computer will not boot up and at times the hard drive is not even recognized at start up. It makes a clicking noise like there is something broken inside, preventing it from reading the disks. I knew this hard drive was going to go, I made up back ups on some of my important files but not all, before it finally crashed. I hate to lose that information that I can't access.

[Grinning Fool]

There are usually data recovery services that can at least get an image of (most of) your data from the hard drive. Though I would expect it to be in the realm of "not cheap"...

[Gfted1]

Hmm, I think that situation usually results in a total loss but you might want to PM tarna as I remember him having a few tricks up his sleeve, with the use of software, that will recover data from damaged drives.

[CoM_Solaufein]

I was browsing some sites that offer data recovery. Quite expensive, ranging from $159 - $500.

[taks]

it may not be a complete drive failure. it could simply be that your boot sector is hosed, and the "clicking" is due to the bios repeatedly attempting to read the sector encountering errors as it does (in which case the drive mechanism could be jumping around). you might want to see if you can hook the drive up to another, working, computer and read the data through that system.

 

taks

[Fenghuang]

Freeze it, try hooking it up to another PC to pull the data off of it.

[jaguars4ever]

Say it isn't so, Jim!

[Fionavar]

In my experience, what is important is to do regular back-ups. Once a drive fails, the cost ratio to repair in respect to new does not rationalise the first. If you have data back-ups, just replace fwiiw.

[taks]

ghost is your friend. of course, i have yet to use it... maybe some day.

 

taks

[Fenghuang]

I have a boot disc with Ghost 2005, ERD 2005, and Partition Magic on it.

 

It is my friend.