Potentially Dead WD HDD, HELP!

lordra

The way I have set up my kit, my laptop is connected to a large 24" scree, with an external keyboard and mouse. It NEVER moves ANYWHERE.

I put my lappy into hibernate, turned off power, went to work, came back, turned it on and... The HDD beeps, I have a PCX error. Now that was because it was trying to boot from the Network card. I checked bios. It says, HDD [NOT DETECTED]. :eek:

The HDD doesn't spin up. I tried putting it into my desktop/gaming PC but during POST, it says, 4th Master Hard Disk Error, Press F1 to resume. :mad:
When I press F1, it says WAIT on a blank screen with a blue line across the top and nothing happens.

I tried Hiren's boot CD with mini windows XP but it crashed and gave me a BSOD.

I have a lot of stuff on the drive, mostly documents and pictures, I don't care about the rest of it so much, most of my stuff is backed up onto dropbox but my documents change on a daily basis and back it up once a month.

I need access to that drive, however briefly, just to get my documents out at least. There are two partitions on it. Its a Western Digital 320GB HDD. 4 years old now. But i've kept it in tip top shape, no battery in the laptop, power from the wall only, its on an elevated platform so air moves freely under it, never leaves the house; dam it never even leaves the desk!

If you go to http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php, the second last sound, titled: Western Digital laptop hard drive with stuck spindle trying to spin up with siren, is EXACTLY what I have.

Can someone please suggest something? Thank you guys, means a lot!

forgotmyname

If you cannot access it on a desktop and a recovery program wont even detect it then its dead.

Only expensive data recovery will get it back.

lordra

forgotmyname wrote: »

If you cannot access it on a desktop

No, I can't.

and a recovery program wont even detect it...

How do I go about doing that?

closed

1). pay £100's for data recovery
2). lose a months work

or

give it a light horizontal shake, which may make things worse, and make 1 impossible, so at your own risk

backup properly in future

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

lordra

So you've listened to the sound? And that's the verdict?!!?? OUCH!

lordra

I've followed your link but wouldn't that apply only if the drive spun up and was recognised somewhere in the OS? It doesn't even show up in the bios, how do I get it to work??

closed

the link is for backup software, preceeded by the words "in future"

if the disk isn't seen by the bios on two machines, no software is going to recover your data, so it's pay, lose, or drastic measures.

The link you provided outlines the likely problem and prognosis

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/western_digital

lordra

Thank you closed, it hurts!
Can't pay, can't lose, so drastic measures it has to be. Could you please outline a few for us to follow through?
Thank you!

lordra

Is there any change that changing the PCB will fix it?!

closed

from your link

Western Digital drives also have common problem with spindle seizure. Usually this occurs after a fall and the drive either doesn't spin up at all with a siren sound: or starts up with loud noise unable to gain enough rotational speed: . Data recovery in such case involves removing platters from the hard drive in clean room environment and putting them into matching donor. This complex and precise procedure requires a lot of experience and use of specialized hardware to maintain platters in perfect alignment.

paddyrg

lordra wrote: »

Is there any change that changing the PCB will fix it?!

Yes, there is a chance. It's still a specialist job.