Neshi

My 250gb extern hdd failed today. The pc can't acces it anymore, and it makes search noises, but louder then normal. (I hope that makes sense)
Is there any way to retrieve the 250gb of data that was on there, like taking the hdd out of the casing and connect it through sata, or something like that?

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Liqourice

I had a harddrive fail for me a few years ago that my computers couldn't do anything with. Not read, not format.. it just "hacked" on it.

However, I found a program called Getdataback that somehow did the job. It took two weeks for it to scan the entire drive and then another week to retrieve the files I wanted to rescue but I got everything I wanted back.

This from a drive that bios couldn't recognise.

Al_Vampyre

I'll second that, GetDataBack is a great program that I always keep handy now, saved my MP3 collection more than once!

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"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" - Brian O'Driscoll - Ireland Rugby Team 2009 Grand Slam winning Captain.

H3X4D3C1M4L

Might try SpinRite, Its bootable, so if you plug the drive into your motherboard then boot it up, it should be able to help figure out the probability of getting things back.

Lowfat

My suggestion...ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP.

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Neshi

backing stuff up from a ext hdd somehow makes having an ext hdd useless.
I used it for stuff I wanted to keep, without it taking up space in my pc-hardrives.

But thanks for the suggestions, I'll try to use GetDataBack! if that doesnt work spinrite is the next.

Tried GDB, but it seems these programs are for harddrives that are still powering up and can be seen by the computer. My drive is trying to read the disk before it is shown in the explorer. And it's this reading that fails.. maybe one of the platters has broken..
The sounds it makes is some king of clicking sound.. to me its sounds like there is a crack in one of the platters, and the laser/needle/pin is stuck there.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Liqourice

Strange because that's exactly the symtoms I had with the drive I rescued. Not even BIOS would detect anything. However, I may have been just lucky.. I don't know.

Oh, now I noticed that you said it was an external. I don't know, mine was an internal Seagate IDE drive.

swimtech

...and if you have to, you can remove the drive from the enclosure and MAKE it an internal. Judicious application of brute force is necessary at times!

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Neshi

I have opened the thing up, and found out it's an IDE drive (it's pretty old when 250gb was pretty much) so just attaching it to the motherboard like an ordinary hdd will suffice?

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

GigaWatt

if the BIOS reads it, then there is a good chance that the data can be rescued...

but if the BIOS can't read that there is a IDE HDD present in the rig, than (in most cases...) all data is lost from the drive...

i've had A LOT of trouble with IDE HDDs, and i've managed to fix a few of them, not just to get the data back, but to be workable again . here is what i have comprihedned about HDDs in my practical experince.

the problem is definately mechanical. the clicking sound you heard from the HDD is the head (that has a very small coil attached to it) trying to read the HDDs MBR (Master Boot Record). the head goes up and down the HDDs plates (the rotating pieces of shiny ferro material) trying to read the MBR, but it can't, thus, it can't boot or read anything from itself. the MBR is the place where every piece of info on the HDD is written (the number of cylinders, heads, sectors, how they are aligned across the shiny metal plates, etc...), so if the MBR can't be read, then the HDD is useless.

one of the things that might cause this behavour (the clicking of the reading/writing head of the HDD) is that the head is out of alignment with the plates (not in the same horizontal line) which can be caused if you have dropped the HDD. so if every other option hasn't turned with any kind of results (the programs you mentioned earlier), then moving the head with your fingers just a little bit might solve the problem. try not to touch the plate since all the data is written on it and the part that you have touched will probably be unreadable even if the trick i have described earlier works... so, be carefull...

another thing that might have happened is expansion/contraction of the HDDs moving (mechanical) parts. one of the things that (most commonly) is the reason for this is cold/heat bursts... when the HDD heats up (when it has been on for a while), the metal expands. when it's turned off, the metal contracts, and so do the mechanical parts in the HDD... so after a couple of thosand of warm ups and cool downs, the prts get out of alignment, and the head and the arm that moves the head are not in the same place as they where the day you bought the HDD...

i know this might sound crazy, but just read me out .

do this IF EVERYTHING ELSE FAILS... put the HDD in an oven, heat it up to about 50-70 degrees... first start with 50 and work your way up testing if the HDD will boot up under BIOS. try with a 5 degree step (try 50, then 55, then 60...). DEFINITELY DO NOT USE A MICROWAVE... the magnetic field from the microwave will damage the data written on the drive. if the process works, then transfer the data (or what is left of it) to another HDD as quickly as possible... because it might not work after the HDD cools off.

the physical explanation for the process is that you emulate the HDDs working temerature (a little bit hingher than the normal one, but it's not such a big deal... since it's dead anyway, you have nothing to loose, right ... just don't let it pass 90 degrees). so all the mechanical parts of the HDD will expand and maybe (just maybe...) will turn the head and the arm and all the rest of the moving parts back in place, so the HDD can be readable again...

this crazy idea came to me once when i was drunk... i just lost all my music on my 40GB HDD, but since it was second hand, the guarantee was probably expired anyway. so i tried ithis and it actually worked... for about 20 minutes, and then it died again (became unreadable). so i warmed it up again (to about 60 degrees), and moved the data to another HDD...

so, if you do this, do it very quickly because the HDD will cool down after a while, and might be useless, so you would have to warm it up again, and god knows if it will work the second time...

i hope i helped... or at least gave a good explanation to what was going on with the HDD...

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Cow_160483

That's so true i once did the same thing to an old 20 GB hard drive that i had but unlike you i was sober "GigaWatt" lol

Another trick that i learned is that if you want to format a stubborn hard drive is to put it in an air tight antistatic bag and chuck it in the freezer for around 30 min and presto a formatted HDD
I dont know the mechanics behind this but it works .... sometimes lol

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Decode!
Muhahahahah!

swimtech

Yes, and being mindful of the jumper settings if necessary. Most drives do ok on cable select nowadays...

And GigaWatt's suggestions can work, also one of our students has tried putting it in a refrigerator - opposite the oven method - and that worked for him like what Cow_160483 mentioined. But again, only as a last resort and after you've made sure it's not a jumper setting issue...

Good luck!

__________________
It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

GigaWatt

whell, didn't do this when i was drunk, the idea came to me when i was drunk (hey, i just lost 40GB of data... what was i supposed to do... lol ). but the whole process was done when i was sober...

and about the freezer thing... i haven't tried that, but i have one 15GB HDD on which i had some really rare mp3 rips form some CDs, some of them i can't find anywhere on the net or P2P programs... will try it...

it's the whole expansion/compression thing of the metal is what does the job making the HDD readable, that was the only logical (and physical) explanation i could come up with about the workable condition of the HDD after i heated it up, or in Cow's case, freezed it down...

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Neshi

great ideas! when I have some time on my hands (in other words, the weekend) I will definitely try it!
I will let you guys know if it worked

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's