Failed IDE Drive

[dajogejr]

I have a failed IDE hard drive for a customer that will not boot, on two differenct known good working systems, different BIOS, jumpers, etc. Yep, even tried the old freezer for a minute trick...

Anyone recommend a good data recovery service...you know, the mad scientists that rip the platters out and read 'em.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Sterling_Aug]

You need to put it in a freezer overnight, not for only a minute.

Do a search on google for data recovery. It will probably cost at least $900 (depending on the size of the drive and how badly the drive is damaged).

[dajogejr]

Actually...I put it in a freezer for about an hour.
I don't think it overheated...only because it worked fine, through shut down, it just wouldn't spin up the next morning, after it had all night to cool down...

I've already found a couple of places, usually 100 for the bench, then 500 to 2000 for the recovery, depending on what's involved...

Thanks.

[Comage]

Hi guys I'm pretty interested in what you're talking. My friend has 2 HDD that has failed on him.

Can anybody explain to my what this "freezer" trick is?

[BipolarBill]

Place drive in ziplock baggie. Place in freezer for a couple of hours. Freeze solid. Remove quickly and salvage data before thaw.

This frees up bad bearings and binding parts long enough to salvage data. Cold things shrink and hot things expand in most cases. Water is an exception.

[Comage]

Wow, that sounds interesting, yet dangerous.

1. Wouldn't the condensation kill the drive outright?

2. Anyway, would the freezer trick still work on drives that can't be detected by BIOS?

[BipolarBill]

1. That's what the Ziplock bag is for.

2. No - that's bad electronics.

[Comage]

Okay, so would it work for drives that BIOS can detect, but can't be accessed under windows?

[BipolarBill]

I just told you - heat.

[rmanet]

if it's FAT32 and the bios sees it, are you getting a dos prompt on the drive?

there's some older file managers out there that'll load under DOS - I've always loaded xtree but there's others

handy when you're up against a drive that's balking when you use windows explorer