Arrrghhh! (Dead HDD...)

[John Bell]

It got to be time update the wife's computer from Win98 to Win2000. In order to make sure that everything was transferred over and working properly, I stuck an old 8 gig drive in her machine and built the system on it, preserving her old system on her 80 gig drive. I got everything set up, tested, and running to my satisfaction and this morning was getting ready to move the image over to the newer larger drive when


Clunk!

What the heck is that noise?

Yep, you guessed it. The old 8 gig drive that I'd invested not a few hours setting up went to its great reward, belly up, Tango Uniform, took the ferry across the River Styx, kicked the bucket, took the dirt nap, DIED!

Arrrgghhh!

That will get me for realizing last night "wow, this old drive is 10 years old! Amazing!"


&*%&^$^%#^$*)(@)_*()@*^(*%@

[paladin]

didja make a note of the passing in the local obits?

[S/V Laura Ellen]

I'm told that $300-$800 is the cost for "almost certain" recovery.

My experience is that 300 - 800 would be on the low side to disk recovery.

[Vince Brennan]

From Fred Langa's email letter lists:


The "hard-drive-in-the-freezer" trick is a real and proven, albeit last-resort, recovery technique for some kinds of otherwise-fatal hard-drive problems. In fact, it's part of a trio of unusual fixes that — believe it or not — can be summed up as "freeze it," "hit it," and "drop it"!

Clearly, these fixes run the risk of further damaging a drive. They truly are last-ditch efforts to be called upon only when you've already tried the normal drive fixes without success and have nothing left to lose. (We'll come back to this in a moment.)

The freezing trick sometimes works because the mechanical contraction/expansion may help free up binding parts. Other times, the cold can help an aging, failing electrical component to remain within specs for at least a few minutes — perhaps enough time for you to recover your essential data from the drive.

Here's how the freezing trick works:

Take the dying, otherwise-irreparable hard drive out of your computer, and place it a Ziploc bag (to help minimize condensation on the drives). Put the bagged drive in a freezer for several hours. Then, working fast, take the drive out, remove the bag, and reconnect the chilled drive to the PC. If the drive spins up and seems to be working, get your essential data off the drive as fast as you possibly can.

( note: I have also gotten an extra-long ribbon cable and power line which allowed me to put the now-frozen HDD on a piece of dry ice in a covered cooler beside the computer... kept it cold and allowed me to d/l a goodly portion of the info on the loser HDD. YMMV)

The best option for this is to selectively copy portions of the dying drive to a new drive. Start with the most essential folder trees (My Documents, for example), and then copy increasingly less important folders as the drive warms up. Odds are, the drive will again become erratic or fail. But, if you're lucky, you'll be able to squeeze one last brief use from it.

The above method can work, but it's classification as a "last-ditch effort" begs the question: What are the front-line techniques? Glad you asked! Here's a series of articles I wrote that will walk you through a whole range of proven techniques for resurrecting a dead hard drive (including the in-the-freezer trick mentioned above):

Dead Drive Fix (http://windowssecrets.com/links/$P20d/25c43ch/?url=www.langa.com%2Fnewsletters%2F2002%2F2002-06-13.htm%232)
Hard Drive Repair Options (Part One) (http://windowssecrets.com/links/$P20d/3e91ebh/?url=www.langa.com%2Fnewsletters%2F2002%2F2002-06-20.htm%232)
Hard Drive Repair Options (Part Two) (http://windowssecrets.com/links/$P20d/0126d8h/?url=www.langa.com%2Fnewsletters%2F2002%2F2002-06-20.htm%233)
More Dead Drive Fixes (http://windowssecrets.com/links/$P20d/d54faeh/?url=www.langa.com%2Fnewsletters%2F2002%2F2002-06-24.htm%231)


(Link removed as it no longer works)

the LangaList recently merged with Windows Secrets and it's one heck of a nice resource for things like this.... lots and lots of techie tips for a free registration and even more for a very reasonable subscription fee... plus a searchable interface for issues back to the beginning. Highly recommended!
http://www.windowssecrets.com/

[High C]

My experience is that 300 - 800 would be on the low side to disk recovery.

Yep, four to five times that is more like it.

[John Bell]

I'll try the freezer trick. The information on the dead drive isn't worth recovering. All that is there is a fresh install of Win2k, MS Office, Acrobat, Firefox, Thunderbird, and AVG, along with the necessary drivers for our peripherals. All of our data is safe, with up to date copies in three locations: a partition on the laptop I'm currently using, a USB hard drive, and another hard drive sitting on my desk.

I can re-create the new system easily enough, it just takes time. My big complaint is that it's the second time I have to do this, that's all.

On thing this has pointed out to me however is that having good backups of things you care about is paramount. If you've only got your stuff in one place, shame on you.

[Sue H.]

John, if you know anyone in college down your way, get them to buy you a copy of XP for around $75.00. With the new VISTA out, you may be able to find XP cheaper than that. I even got Microsoft Office 2003 for $75.00 through school.

If her computer is pretty old, you might think about checking out someplace like tigerdirect.com and look at their recertified or overstock desktops. Sometimes you can find great deals on well-equipped machines. I keep watching them hoping they'll come down even more when all the new machines equipped for Vista start hitting the stores.

Sorry about the dead drive - we'll send flowers.:) I love the idea of freezing it to do a temporary restore. You'll have to let us know if that works.

[John Bell]

I appreciate the advice, Sue. The machine I'm working on is a year 2000 Win 98SE box. It lacks the horsepower to run XP very well. It runs 2K very nicely. I don't need to be spending money on any new computers right now since I'm about a month from having to make two mortgage payments if my current house doesn't sell. The machine I'm updating will do everything we need to do and then some, anyway. The hype around new OSs and software is overrated, IMO.

[Sue H.]

Didn't mean to double post!

You have my sympathies on the mortgages, we've seen neighbors go through the same thing and it's tough. Hopefully you'll have a buyer soon.

You've got a point about the new OS. The main pitfall of the older versions is that at some point they quit being compatible with newer software and hardware. Most of the bells and whistles are window dressing and security features seem to be more the focus.

We can't afford a new computer either, but I'm still watching the prices like a hawk, because working with Photoshop takes so much memory and speed that a newer, faster computer would be a boon. Same with Mike's music software - it takes loads of memory and speed.

They get ya one way or the other!

Still curious about the frozen hard drive. I'd love to know if that works. It almost makes me want to break a hard drive just to test the theory out.:p

[Vince Brennan]

Sue: it does work- sometimes, but it is definitely a "last-resort" solution.

[Sue H.]

Amazing! If I ever have one go belly up I'll give that a try Vince. Interesting info.