Topic: Serious help needed

[Steve]

The cat was playing behind the desk, and somehow managed to pull my running 320GB external hard drive off the desk and it cracked onto the floor HARD. I held my breath and turned it on, and the comp picked it up but it started making a knocking noise. I turned it off and as it spun down i heard a metal on metal type whine as it stopped.

This thing is almost full, and i was literally about 5 minutes from making a image of it. Theres YEARS worth of data on it. Worst part is i have nothing to save the stuff too because im out of DVD's and her desktop cant read the 250GB drive i have.

So do i take the enclosure apart and check it out, or do i boot it and go for an image and hope it doesnt quit on me?

what a cap to a really shitty day

[Steve]

Have to run it in the enclosure, its SATA and the dekstop i have is IDE. The cover is off now though so i can boot it for a minute and get an idea how bad it is...:sigh:

EDIT:

The enclosure muffled it, its BAD. Its a knock and whine and it drops off windows after a few seconds. I have no idea wtf im going to do. Only thing i can think of is to remove it, put it in a ziplock and let it sit in the freezer for the night hope it will work long enough to image it. Or if i can use a clients pc to slave my 250GB maybe data dump it.

[hans]

Sorry to hear that man. I'll cross my fingers for ya.


Runs off to do backup.

[Steve]

Yea not much else i can do. Going to sleep on it let the thing get nice and cold.

[KnuckleBuckett]

Shoot the cat?   

[Steve]

Well thats a given

[Steve]

Mission failure. I had it under a ton of ice and it was frozen like a glacier. Hooked it up instantly and it ran for a good few minutes perfectly quiet BUT it never came up in windows. Before i could see the drive the violent noise came back again. The board in the enclosure doesnt seem to be damaged at all so im thinking the drive isnt working at all just spinning.

Any ideas? Anyone ever opened a actual drive up before? Maybe i should open it see if i can see the major issue?

[ober]

I've cracked a few open... trust me, you won't be able to fix it.  Those are precision machines that would only be fixed by the manufacturer.

And stupid question, I know... but isn't a backup drive simply that?  A backup drive?  Wouldn't you have all the files somewhere else?

... yet another reason to not own fucking pets.

[Steve]

Normally yes, but the laptop is at HP so my only copy of everything was on here. And thats why i was getting ready to image it "just in case". I have got them to work before with the freeze trick, but since its external i dont know if its not picking up because of the drive, or if its because the enclose board got damaged. And i dont have a SATA setup to test that.

If i had the 500-800 bucks i would pay one of the recovery services to get the data, but i dont. fucking christ i dont need this right now

[kermi3]

Stick it in the freezer in a non-static bag until you have the $500

[Rob]

The heads are fucked. The metallic whine is the fucked heads scraping oxide of the fucked platters. The knocking noise is the servo desperately searching for a non-existant track 0.

In short, you could freeze it to absolute zero and it wouldn't make a jot of difference.

Sorry.

[webwhy]

how valuable can 320Gb of pr0n be?

[Rob]

Well, you wouldn't just want to toss it away...








... I'll get me coat.

[Steve]

I didnt think freezing it was going to do much, but it was worth a try. And if it was 300gigs of porn i would have just said fuck it (no pun intended).

I guess since its a hitatchi drive inside and the date says nov of 07 i might be able to get a RMA number. Just claim it stopped working then at least i will have a working drive again.

[KnuckleBuckett]

Stick it in the freezer in a non-static bag until you have the $500

Niiice!