I had Win XP pro SP2 running on P4 with 1GB RAM and 3 HDD converted to Dynamic Disks and Striped. The whole arrangement was working very well untill last night my one of the HArd Disks crashed due to unknown reasons.
The Hard DIsk is a Western Digital Vaviar 3 40 GB and was the Primary disk with Boot PArtition. Whenever I start my machine the Hard Disk makes a short "Screaching" sound and then goes silent and again after few minutes screaches. The BIOS is unable to detect the HD ans now I cannot boot and I have lost everything whatever I had on my HDDs including the 2 gud ones.
I just need to know if there is any possibility of getting the HDD back to work so that I can just copy disk to another HD or shall I just forget about the loss and start installing everything from scratch...!!
TIA
Rajeev
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You can try the disk in another PC, if your lucky it might work there. Otherwise there are companies around which can recover data from dead disks, but this is expensive.
Try to find an exact same disk somewhere (maybe you have one in another PC, or check on ebay for someone selling one).
First make sure it is the same model and has the same PCB on it. If that is the case you can try changing the PCB with that of the other drive. If it isn't the disks mechanics that are failing, you should have a running disk again!
Actually from the very begining I was pretty sure that I have lost everything on those striped disks. I was quite sure about the media crash and the improbable data recovery. Changing the Logic Board woud not help as the sound(Scream of hell) was of Media Crash . I did show it to a pro data recoverer but as I suspected he had less experience in handling Dynamic disks than myself.
So I abondoned the drive (Warranty expired) and recovered whatever little from the backups I had. So.. the matter is closed from me.
Thnx for your inputs anyway.
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by: rindiPosted on 2004-11-27 at 03:25:20ID: 12685662
Forget about the loss, write down the exact part number and serial number of the disk, visit the western Digital Site and find out if the disk is still inside warranty. If yes, fill in the form, you'll get an RMA, print it and mail the disk as explained online toWD. they will send you a replacement.