Hard Drive Question

V

Velenoso

Expert Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2007
Messages
2,753
Hey Guys,

I have a question that someone could maybe help me with. A friend of mine (who I've been helping to open a childcare here in JNB) has a problem with her computer.

I went and had a look at it, after powering it on, it does not detect the HDD any longer. It's quite an old PC with a 20GB Seagate HDD. Now, when you listen closely to it it makes a strange noise (similar to when reading) constantly for about a minute, then goes quiet. Even the BIOS does not detect it.

I brought it to my office and hooked it up to one of the machines here, same story, will not detect at all.

Anyway, I bought her a new hard drive and got my web guy to hook it up and it's working fine. He also can't make heads or tails of this thing and says the HDD is shot. Problem is, she's been working on this 200 page document and it's stuck in there, she didn't do a backup.

Is there anything I can try to resurrect this HDD for long enough to recover this data off of it?

Any help would be great.

Thanks in advance
 
K

killadoob

Honorary Master
Joined
Jan 30, 2004
Messages
46,571
the only thing you can do now is take to guys who will extract the data for 2k +

wow alot of work she will be doing or alot of money she will be spending
 
kronoSX

kronoSX

Honorary Master
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
14,916
google for good free software that scans on start up...
 
V

Velenoso

Expert Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2007
Messages
2,753
2K? Man that's a bit steep to recover data. Will this free software work even though the thing doesn't detect in the BIOS? Thanks for the response.
 
S

sn3rd

Expert Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2008
Messages
4,305
Doubt the software will work if you can't even detect the hard drive.

There are other options: I've seen guys do data recovery for much less than R2000 (actually a few hundred only). Never tried it (nor know anyone who has), so I don't know how reliable it is.
 
kronoSX

kronoSX

Honorary Master
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
14,916
I did see something on the net and on this forum to recover files from a nearly broken drive...
What i did once was i banged the drive in my palms for a few seconds.i also plugged and unpluged the power while booting up...anyways i got it to wokr for a while like this
 
T

The_Techie

Resident Techie
Joined
Dec 26, 2006
Messages
11,240
As recommended in the FAQ, Spinrite might be able to help you with that :)
 
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