Hard drive died, need to recover data

there are services like drivesavers that can recover data like that. the only downside to that it is that it costs around $1000 or so. you could try freezing the hd, and you MIGHT be able to swap out the platters with another drive of the same model as long as they're not damaged. But unless you have invaluable data on that hard drive, its not worth it.

Clicks and grinds almost always indicate that the disk heads are in physical contact with the platters. Given that this is not the way that hard disks are designed to work, it implies that your disk is only fit for the metal recycler.

The first thing to do is to hook up a second hard disk to your PC onto which data can be salvaged. Try to locate a Linux LiveCD that can read NTFS file systems and see if you can copy any files across. A better alternative to a LiveCD is a Windows PE CD (which uses Microsoft's real NTFS drivers rather than reverse engineered versions. Or swap the jumpers on the hard disk so that it is a slave drive and try mounting it in a PC that is running Windows 2000 or XP.

Good luck.

When did you buy this drive? If i am not mistaken, Seagate now offers a 5 year warranty wich has been in affect since the end of last year wich will cover data recovery costs. I might be wrong but the two 160GB Seagates I have also have a 5 year and I am pretty sure i read that it covers data recovery.

Try putting the drive in a Ziploc bag and stick it in the freezer for half an hour. Then pull it out, hook it up and try to copy data off. You'll only have as much time as the drive remains cold; once it warms back up, it'll start clicking and grinding again. I've seen people take this a step further and simply stick the drive in an external USB enclosure and put the whole enclosure in the freezer, then power the drive up when it's cold and recover the data from there.

If the drive is still under warranty, that would be my first attempt at recovery; trying to perform a platter swap is very risky and expensive (because you're basically sacrificing a new drive). Only if the data is worth thousands of dollars would it be worth sending the drive off for professional recovery.

Nope, it doesn't cover recovery costs. No HDD manufacturer in its right mind would include such a clause, because doing so would cost them a *ton* of money. It would be akin to a car manufacturer including a clause that offers to reimburse you for the time you have to take off work when you need to bring your car in the shop. Just ain't gonna happen.

this might help, as it can try to reconstruct some corrupted files that is missing half of it's date:

PC Inspector File recover

this is bascially a pro tool that they released to the public. As far as where they make their money, it's that they do file recovery the pro way (like doing platter swaps in clean rooms etc...)

Got this from seagates site...

"What Will Seagate Do? If Seagate authorizes a product to be returned to Seagate or an authorized service provider, Seagate will replace the drive without charge with a functionally equivalent replacement product. Seagate may replace a product with a product that was previously used, repaired and tested to meet Seagate specifications. By sending product for replacement, ownership of the original product will be transferred to Seagate. Seagate will not return original drives to consumers. Data recovery is not covered under this warranty and is not part of the repair or exchange process. If you would like data recovery performed on your drive, it is available from Seagate as a separate service for an additional charge. Seagate warrants that repaired or replaced products are covered for the greater of either the remainder of the original product warranty or 90 days."

Guess I got confused with something else.

...to PC Inspector. Might be helpful with an older disk drive that I have.

tony b.

Hey
That is common issue I run into all the time working for a large IT corporation. We have custmers bringing in machines on a daily basis where the hard drive has crashed, along with all their precious photo's, music, and documents.. 9 times out of 10, the customers have not abcked these up to some type of media, and the data is unrecoverable. So the moral to this story is back up! Like the old saying goes.. Don't put all your eggs in one basket..
Anyways, moving on from my lecture.. I know Australia ahs a few data recovery centre's where you can send your crashed hard drive to.. unfortunatley, this is a long, time consuming process, and is often quite expensive. Not really worth it..
If your hard drive is making clicking sounds or similar, it usually indicates that their is physical damage inside it, narrowing the chances of recovering data...

Peace..Macintrash

Put the HD in plastic rap or a ziploc bag then put it in the freezer for 24hrs then u should have enough time to recover anything u need...

It's hard to backup 160GB of stuff... Anyway, I finally got around to (read as: got off my ass) hooking it up to a IDE to USB/Firewire adapter, and running Getdataback NTFS on XP, and it seems to be working, so I hope when I get back from work it will have found all my lost pr0n.

Hi

I had a cd and a floppy go bad and I used Bad Copy Pro and it recovered all the information on the dics for me. It might be worth the time to try the free one to see if it will work. If it does then buy it. I think it was about $40.00 US.

Good LUCK

Dogman