hard drive dead

A

andygodwin

Registered
hi all,
one of my HD's in my old G4 has crashed and died, not a complete disaster as backed up...but...some months ago.

at startup i can hear it clunking and grinding for a bit then after 30secs it stops and then doesnt appear on the desktop, (the other drive has the sys folder on it)..

is there anything i can do? dont want to pay anymore than hmm £20 to retrive data.. or can i 'get in there' myself .?/
regards andy merry xmas
A
 
First of REPLACE the disk! Second FORCE YOURSELF to have a good backup schedule. Third is to buy and external firewire drive that you can use to try to get data off that drive. Fourthly put the dead hard drive if a freezer proof bag and then put it in you freezer. Let it get good and really cold. Then when you take the drive out off the freezer you must put it in QUICKLY in the external and then try to mount it. Then you may have minutes to get get the data off it!

Anything after trying this your only option is a going to a professional service.

As the say goes "It is not IF you hard drive will, it is WHEN your hard drive will fail".
 
cheers, didnt quite know whether you were serious but have tried that anyway
on further inspection the drive spins up ok, i can hear/ feel it, but the heads cant get out of their parked position.

anything else you can reccomend?

A
 
There's not much you can do with a physically damaged hard drive, other than throw it out and get a new one and restore from your backups.

Data recovery services can probably recover the data, but you will be without the drive for a few weeks and you'll pay through the nose (I've seen bills climb as high as $3,000, starting at about $500).

There is one "trick" you can try -- take the hard drive out of the computer, and put it in an airtight baggie (double-bagging it in some Ziplock bags should do). Place it in the freezer for about an hour, then take it out and immediately reinstall it in the computer and try it. If it works, IMMEDIATELY copy the data off of it to a new hard drive or something. The idea here is that the freezing process will cause the internal parts to, ever so slightly, contract, possibly causing the hard drive heads to "break free" of whatever's causing them to stick. It's a last ditch effort, but it's worked for me before.

The airtight double-bagging is essential, though -- you do NOT want any moisture to enter or leave the hard drive while in the freezer.
 
cheers,
as a last resort, i tried hitting the side with a hammer at exactly the same point as the heads were trying to release....well something changed but still no luck. so its in the bin.

cheers all.
 
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