Internal Hard Drive will not mount

[rtinav]

Hi All,

I have an older Mac G4 running OS X (10.4.11) and I have three internal hard drives, one of which will not mount. I can hear it spinning up and trying to mount, but it won't.

Is it trashed? I've tried everything I know to get it to mount. Is there a way that I can at least recover some files that are on it?

Thanks in advance!

rtinav

[ElDiabloConCaca]

When a hard drive starts making funny sounds, you're almost guaranteed to have some sort of mechanical malfunction going on. There's really no way to tell the extent of the damage, nor is there any guarantee as to how much, if any, data can be salvaged from the drive.

Sometimes drives just get "stuck" and you're able to salvage just about everything. Other times, the drive has truly "crashed", the data is gone, and you're left just buying a new drive and simply restoring from the backups that you keep.

There is one trick that's worked for me once, and that's to freeze the drive. Yup, freeze it. Put it in an airtight bag of some sort so that condensation doesn't seep in, and toss it in the freezer for about 2 hours or so. When removing it after that time period, install it immediately and try to recover as much data as possible before it dies again.

Otherwise, you can try a service like www.drivesavers.com, but be prepared to pay out the yin-yang for it.