OdieTurbo lost his PC!

[OdieTurbo]

Originally Posted by bbgobie

Yeah, the places I've heard of are mucho $$$.
Its weird, of the 10 or say hard drives i've had fail, there was always symptoms first...

Yeah, I've had drives go before and usually had symptoms. This time however, no warning. Of course I'm running 3 fans so my pc sounds like a 747 getting ready for takeoff so I may have missed some quiet sounds

As to others mentioning slaving the drive, it's in a 2 drive machine already, but it was the main drive. I'll have to install Windows on the 2nd drive and boot off that and then see if I can read the dead drive.

If data recover is 4 figures ($$$$), I'll have to see what other route I can go. What was on the drive isn't gold, but the last 7 years worth of pics of my 3 daughters

[CO ZX2]

Odie, why don't you try as Coyote X suggested, spinning the HD on the tabletop and stopping it suddenly. I would repeat 2-3 times. I believe there is a decent chance you may get it to work for awhile. Can't hurt anything.

It would be a crying shame to lose your girls' pictures. If it should load up, have a CD ready and start copying your pics. If it keeps running, I would not let it rest till you get your pics.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Try slaving it to see if the host OS will recognize it. If that doesn't work, put it in the freezer for a decent amount of time and/or try the spinny trick. If you can mount it, there're very good data recovery tools, however you may not be able to do that.

[Gary Palmer]

Odie Turbo: That is really unfortunate. If the ideas people have given you don't pan out and you reach a point where you've exhausted everything short of the data recovery service, but with no success, let me know. I can't do anything, short term, like the next month or so, but after that, I'd be willing to take a crack at getting a identical, working drive and doing a platter swap or whatever. It would cost you the price of a working identical drive and shipping and it might not work, but heh, it might.

For seven years worth of pictures of your girls, I'd give it a shot.

[usedgeo]

Well I am no expert with computers. Some of ours at work have the boot up memory battery go dead. On those you can reconfigure the hard drive if you know the number of tracks and such. I think this applies to pretty old computers. Anyway it is the only hopeful suggestion I can think of.

The July 2007 PCWORLD magazine had an article dealing with this type of disaster. You might want to look the article up. There is a whole page dealing with a crashed hard drive.

[OdieTurbo]

Thanks guys! I'm hoping to have a chance to try a few things this weekend!

[OdieTurbo]

Hey! I got it fixed! Hopefully this weekend, I'll get it bolted back together. Turns out my 2nd hard drive was killing the PC. I hooked up HD#1 to my parents PC to copy off my pics and such, no problems. Hooked up HD#2 to do the same thing, BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. Unhooked it and things were OK again. Hooked it up again, BSOD. Never seen a drive take out a PC like that.