Hard Drive Failure
This hard drive is one of two in a HP tower, operating with Windows XP-Professional.The drive "suddenly" did not appear in Windows Explorer. It was not the physical boot drive. This drive was used for data, mainly image files. The owners father passed away last month, and this drive contains the family's photos (grim, I know).
I removed the drive and attempted to access it as an external drive, using a USB adapter. No luck. I then attached it to a known good system, as an IDE drive (Cable Select and as a Slave). No luck in Explorer. I can see the drive in the bios however when connected to a secondary IDE port.
I scanned the drive using OnTrack-Easy Recovery. The program saw the drive. It was not able to determine what the format was though (FAT or NTFS). (I do not know what the origional format was, but my guess is NTFS). The scan for data was not successful.
Suspecting a physical failure, I refrigerated the drive for about an hour (in a sealed container). The hope here was that if the drive had a physical problem, the cooler temperature would "tighten things up" in the drive. I'm not completely nuts--this has worked for me on a couple of occasions in the past.
As I am typing this, I'm attempting to image the drive using "GetDataBack-NTFS". I don't know if this is going to work. My plan is to (after imaging) to try to recover the data using GetDataBack.
While the imaging process was running, and reached approximately 35%, the drive started a rhythmic clicking for about 30 seconds, the imaging process paused during this clicking, and resumed after the clicking stopped.
Assuming that GetDataBack does not work, what should I try next?
I removed the drive and attempted to access it as an external drive, using a USB adapter. No luck. I then attached it to a known good system, as an IDE drive (Cable Select and as a Slave). No luck in Explorer. I can see the drive in the bios however when connected to a secondary IDE port.
I scanned the drive using OnTrack-Easy Recovery. The program saw the drive. It was not able to determine what the format was though (FAT or NTFS). (I do not know what the origional format was, but my guess is NTFS). The scan for data was not successful.
Suspecting a physical failure, I refrigerated the drive for about an hour (in a sealed container). The hope here was that if the drive had a physical problem, the cooler temperature would "tighten things up" in the drive. I'm not completely nuts--this has worked for me on a couple of occasions in the past.
As I am typing this, I'm attempting to image the drive using "GetDataBack-NTFS". I don't know if this is going to work. My plan is to (after imaging) to try to recover the data using GetDataBack.
While the imaging process was running, and reached approximately 35%, the drive started a rhythmic clicking for about 30 seconds, the imaging process paused during this clicking, and resumed after the clicking stopped.
Assuming that GetDataBack does not work, what should I try next?
If you'd consider sending it to a data recovery service, I'd recommend these folks. Extremely talented, good prices, etc. http://www.gillware.com/customers.php
What is the exact model of the hard drive and the DCM? Also, did the imaging finish? If so you should look at R-studio from here. http://www.r-studio.com/
@David-Howard The ticking noise is caused by the heads rapidly moving back and forth trying to find servo information from the platters. The sound of the heads hitting the platters is much different ( a screech). As for the cooling of the drive, I would not recommend this. When booting the computer does the drive make any noises out of the ordinary?
@David-Howard The ticking noise is caused by the heads rapidly moving back and forth trying to find servo information from the platters. The sound of the heads hitting the platters is much different ( a screech). As for the cooling of the drive, I would not recommend this. When booting the computer does the drive make any noises out of the ordinary?
This is a good example for some WD drives
http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-repair-and-data-recovery-f1/noise-related-to-pcb-in-wd-hdds-final-edition-t7986.html
http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-repair-and-data-recovery-f1/noise-related-to-pcb-in-wd-hdds-final-edition-t7986.html
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That ticking noise that you described sounds like an actuator arm/head hitting against the drive platters.
It is possible (I've done it.) to replace the internal hardware (if that is the cause). However, you open yourself up to potential problems such as scratching (even dust can cause issues.) This link explains those issues and the never fail clean room. Expensive but if the data is worth it.....
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-20-2006-99925.asp
David