HDD problems

S

S1ght

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I know the end answer to this is prob just to buy another HDD but it never hurts to ask :D

I have/had a western digital 120gb HDD, yesterday it just stopped working, it stops at the boot screen where it says detecting IDE channels and just freezes, if you feel the HDD you can feel that the HDD isn't spinnin which explains why it doesn't work...

Is there anyway to fix this or should I just throw it away?

Thanx in advance
S1ght
 
Sounds to me like it's wasted. Any of the warranty left? A new 120GB hard disk isn't gonna cost you that much anyway. This time buy a Hitachi ;)
 
Hey s1ght, this may sound stupid, but check your power connectors. Take a new power cable that's not in use and plug it into the hdd, preferrably one that's not connected or part of the previous power cable. Make sure the IDE cable is fitted correctly, swop it with your CD/DVD writer cable and test it. Also, unplug the CD/DVD Writer and see if the HDD powers up. No harm in trying hey? :D
 
Yep, those were the first few things I tried, even tried in another person's pc & still the same. hmm, lets see either a nice 10 000 rpm drive or 2 raided 250gig's ? :p
 
s1ght, if there is important data that you desperatly need to get off the drive there is a method that you could try to use to get the drive up for one last time. you need to heat up the bearing, and that should loosen it up, but afterwards, you can throw the thing away.
 
if you don't get it working, get a Seagate Drive, as they have 5 year warranty's, I think Maxtor (owned by seagate) has 1 or 3 Year warranty. WD's ahv 3 years or so.
 
I checked there site & according to them my warrenty expired in 2004 & bought it in 2003 so I guess 1 year warrenty for western digital :( Well I suppose I need to get a new HDD anyway. Has anyone tried that method where you take out the plates & swap them into another drive?
 
I had an old HDD which stopped spinning. I opened the thing up and powered it up and then turned the platters by hand...which got it going for long enough to retrieve most of the important data off of it. Happens :D
 
Well got nothing else to lose, How do you open it because its neither a flat nor phillips nor any alan key :confused:
 
hard drives usually use Torx screws, you can get the Torx bits from and Hardware store or game, dion, mica etc. Just get a non-magnetic one, as a magnetic can damage data and drive. See this wiki for more info: click here
 
Last edited:
My Opinion

In my opinion, I rate seagate all the way... :)

Has never let me down...Maxtor is still risky even if they are now owned by seagate.
 
Seagate seems to be the best with the drives and warranty. I had a Maxtor and a month after the warranty expired (1 yr), the drive crashed. I now have a WD and Samsung in my PC, & a Seagate in my Tivo.
 
I've heard some bad stuff about Maxtor, I think I'm gonna get the Hitachi Desktar 250 gig SATA2, its R660 from cyberdyne, sucks that I paid R1000 for my WD 120 gig ATA :p
 
Peppercorns said:
In my opinion, I rate seagate all the way... :)

Has never let me down...Maxtor is still risky even if they are now owned by seagate.
Click to expand...
I have the opposite experience... My 60GB Maxtor is still plugging away after 4 years, while I've gone through two Seagates and a WD (newer ones) in the same period.
 
Just out of curiosity, is SATA2 backwards compatible? say I would beable to use a SATA2 drive on my motherboard which only supports SATA1 right?
 
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