my Western Digital 120G hard drive went faulty. It has loads of photo transparency scans on it that I spent a week inputting! Wah!
Anyway I'm resigned to having lost them, but am interested in what happned. Windows 98 reported that there was going to be an imminent failure of the drive and I should back it up immediately. I didn't/couldn't and Windows was right. I managed to transfer some important recorded music first - the transfer got slower and slower and eventually the disc died completely and wouldn't transfer anything else. I think the file names are still all there but it just hunts and hangs when you try and copy anything.
Any info on what happened or suggestions of recovery?
You should download the Western digital drive test software. It will at least tell you what's wrong with the drive and might be able to fix certain errors. Andy Cuffe
Try temporarily mounting the drive upside-down relative to its original position, then copying the data. If no luck...try all other orientations. Also try disconnecting the drive, sealing it in a plastic bag, then placing it in a freezer for 24 hours. Remove, reconnect and try while still cold...and at several points while warming up.
The drive maybe still under warranty. Check "Warranty Check" at this page:
formatting link
It lets you enter the serial number and tell if it still under warranty. Make sure that if they fix/replace it, the data remain intact.
If all else fails, buy the same exact model and replace the electronics, don't open the hard drive where the storage disks are. If it doesn't work, you could still put the electronics back to the new drive and use it.
If you don't find the drive at your local store, try eBay...
I suspect the real issue is that given a spare board, it's relatively easy to change that, just in case. Anything else is likely to be beyond the end user. Witness recent threads here, people opening up their hard drives, and letting the dust in. SOmeone wanting to move the platters to another drive and wondering if alignment is all that important.
Of course, someone a month or so ago wasn't successful changing boards, which in retrospect makes sense since the boards are set to match the state of the platters and ignore the bad sectors of those platters. Change the board and that information doesn't match.
I suspect many of the home remedies, shaking the drive when in operation, putting the drive in the freezer, swapping boards, may have had more use when drives were smaller density, and before they were IDE. People wanting to do these things may just continue to do it with the hope of solving something, rather than because they still apply. Given current density, there is a lot less leeway for any fussing.
If someone is trashing a drive, it doesn't matter if they damage anything, because they are trading the hope of salvaging something with the fact that it's trash anyway. Anything they try may get results, and that's better than tossing the drive out without trying anything. Since the drive is unreliable, damaging it further will not affect anything. Someone is far more willing to try to fix something they've found in the garbage, or are about to throw out, than if it's something they just bought for hundreds of dollars.
Of course, if anyone has hopes of having a drive professionally recovered, money aside, then one has to think twice before they start trying home remedies, because then they risk damaging the data that someone else can revover.
When operating, was the HDD too hot? Do you have a good clean/cool air flow across the drive?
Even though this wouldn't have helped, if a partition has oggles of unused space, I'll take Partition Magic 8.01 and make a backup partition on the same drive. Yes - it might not have helped here! However, here's my next suggestion... Install/reuse an old/nasty/slow secondary drive and zip/compress your data frequently to it. Let's let Gareth's experience push us closer into regular backups for ourselves...
My heart goes out to you Gareth. Best wishes and good luck to you.
This reminds me of some hard drive failures. I found that those who don't have a room for air flow fail or develop bad sectors early on(mostly bad sectors and total system freeze, including the mouse pointer). These drives where installed in the bottommost slot, with very little gap between the electronics and the bottom surface.
P.S.: I did replace the electronics in 10 GB WDC hard drives without problems and recovered the data. I know that they could have calibration parameters in them, but I was able to recover the data nevertheless.
Thanks, just tried the diagnostics and if failed dismally. The "Reallocated Sector Count" box is checked as bad. It just sits there clicking and spinning and clicking and spinning, and the warranty is out of date according to the warranty check.
The oldest drive I've recovered with the freezer trick was a 2 gig IDE, the newest a 30 gig, the last successful board swap was a 1 gig IDE, I've tried it with a few newer drives and it didn't work.
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