Dead hard disk 3

[age]

A friend of mine has just tried to replace his hard disk in his pc. He took the old disk out, unpacked the new disk, and found he'd been sent the wrong one. So he put the old disk back in and bios couldn't see it, or the cd-rom that's on the same ide cable. The jumpers are correct, bios is set to auto detect, the cables are ok (unplug the hard disk and the cdrom gets picked up straight away), the power cable works, and the old disk had spent about 10 minutes sat on the guys duvet while he was discovering that the new disk was wrong.... So what could have happened to it?

There's no sound of the drive spinning up... I've tried plugging the disk into my pc and the same happens - it doesn't find the disk or anything that shares an ide cable with it..... anybody got any suggestions of ways to bring this disk back to life? ... he has some stuff on it that he'd really like to rescue.

Thanks.

Adrian.

 

[Zelandakh]

Either you have a physcial failure, or (check the dumb ones first), you have set the jumpers wrongly. Would also check you have not put it in upside down - red (number 1 pin) goes nearest the power.

Also try putting it on its own IDE channel with no other devices.

 

[age]

Honest to god it's not jumpers, cables, or the ide channel (i'm an IT Tech and have built and fixed a lot of PC's, plus i've checked, double checked, tried all combinations, tried it on it's own, tried it in another PC).... Could Physical failure occur so easily? If he's giving me all the facts, he took it out of his PC, left it on his bed for a short while, and then put it back in his PC... Could it have been static or something?? Are there any magic fixes to recover from this, like freezing it or something?

Thanks for your help Zelandakh.

 

[Zelandakh]

If you have tried it yourself rather than trusting a user to do it themselves then I would say it is a physical problem.

Connect the power but not the IDE cable. Switch on and feel the drive - does it spin up. If not there are two possibilities. One is that the drive is dead, the other is that the BIOS is a new one that will not fire the machine up without a recognised HD.

Because you can't see the CD on the same cable, it points more to a disk problem that a BIOS problem.

If you need the data (why didn't you back it up) then you can send it to various companies that specialise in retrieving data from dead hard disks. They usually start at $1,000 to look at the disk and then more to get the data off.

If you know categorically that it is a physical problem, put it in the fridge for 24 hours and then put it into a known working computer as a slave as this can resurrect it long enough to get the data off - but that is a last resort short of giving it a good tap on the desk before trying the same thing.

 

[Zorlod]

Does the drive spin up if you just hook the power up to it and not the ribbon cable?

 

[dkediger]

With no motor spin up and not being able to see another drive on the same channel - sounds like the drives control electronics went south.

An option, if you have another IDE/ATA drive of the same exact model, is to swap the control boards on the drive itself. I've been able to revive many 'dead' drives this way in order to retreive info from them.

If you're going to try this, just make sure the 'donor' drive doesn't have anything critical. Note that this will also void the warranties on the drives.

 

[age]

Zelandakh, thanks for the fridge tip - I knew there was some trick like this, but I'd only heard it in passing and for some reason I had in my head that I had to freeze it! ) ... As for backing up, I think he's learned his lesson on that one.... although, to be fair, that was one of the reasons for him installing the new big hard disk in the first place.....

Zorlod, I'm getting no sign of life from the drive at all... with or without the ide cable (and I have tested the power cables with other drives - they all work)...

dkediger, as luck would have it he does have another identical drive - How would the donor drive fair if I did this? If I got the data off of the broken drive, and then rebuilt the donor drive again afterwards, what are the chances of it surviving?

Thanks everyone.....

Adrian.

 

[dkediger]

age - If you follow good static control procedures - usually the donor drive fairs OK and can then have its controller board reinstalled and works fine. You will most likely need a small Torx driver to remove the controller boards. The electrical contacts into the drive itself are usually by spring contacts, although I have seen some small ribbon cables.

 

[age]

so all I have to do now is persuade him to let me take his remaining working hard disk to pieces (which will probably go down better than telling him to stick it in the fridge with the beers for a day).....

 

[edfair]

If you change the board, try it with power only for 1 or 2 seconds first to see if the motor tries to spin up. If you have a fried motor, much more than 2 seconds will fry the motor drive stuff. I would be more likely to try the bad board on the good HDA as a first step since the motor is more forgiving than the electronics. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[age]

will do.