Possibly dead hard-drive

rmg1

OK - a bit of a cheeky question.
One of the hard-drives from a works computer appears to have given up the ghost.
It's a Maxtor 80GB drive in a HP machine (don't ask what model, I don't know).
They've tried some sort of hard-drive recovery CD-Rom to no avail and another machine with the same specs can't see it either.

Is it possible that I can plug it into my machine as a back-up drive and "re-initialise" it to wipe it clean (providing they let me, of course!)?
Is it worth a try or should it just go in the bin? The drive appears to be spinning but our tech bods say the controller board has packed in.

If it's worth trying it as a slave drive, can someone give me the instructions as I can't find them even though I've done it before.

jaydeeuk1

If there's no data worth keeping, just chuck it. No point in using an un reliable hard drive, will cause no end of problems. New 250gb drives are £25 nowadays.

brandx

I would hit it with a sledge hammer before I bin it just to be on the safe side.

vyseyboy

There was a batch of Maxtor 80GB hard drives (thinner-than-many single platter one's, if I remember right,) that were really prone to getting corrupted firmware. I got stung by two of them. They can be recovered by a piece of proprietary software which cost ~ $400 dollars if I remember rightly, but it's really not worth it for most people.

Hammertime!

niceguyrichy

rmg1 wrote: »

If it's worth trying it as a slave drive, can someone give me the instructions as I can't find them even though I've done it before.

hell why not, its worth a try if you've got a spare minute on your hands.
to set it as a slave, look on the top of the drive above the collection of 8 pins (2 rows of 4), some drives will show you the jumper settings here impressed in the plastic. you put the jumper across the indicated 'slave' pins. failing that , look at the label on the drive. it will tell you. if memory serves, some maxtors are set to slave when there is no jumper in there at all.
then you just plug into your second IDE and give it a whirl
I'm one of these people that never throws anything away unless it's really, properly broken. so I'm with you, try it anyways

[Deleted User]

Faulty hard drives being used for back up, madness!

iviv

Thats a good point, +3 points for reading the OP!

If the workplace gave you the hard drive because its 'given up the ghost', its likely that it'll die on you too. Though with hard drives being rather cheap now anyway, its probably best to just buy a new one.

niceguyrichy

be_alright wrote: »

Faulty hard drives being used for back up, madness!

not everyone means the same thing when they say 'backup'.
if the drive works as slave, then why not just use it for stuff like redirecting all temp files for any video / cd/ game copy's/ burns to it for example. they take up a ton of room on your primary drive and if the slave cr*ps out and you loose the temps then big deal, just start the burn over.