Dead Hard Drive - HELP?!?

[Shagnasty]

I'm stuck, Have a Maxtor 40gb ata/66 drive
that died. I was running Win Me on the drive
when the screen froze, had to shut down. When
I tried to reboot, the system stopped recognizing
that drive. I've swapped everything, Drives,
Ribbons, Power, etc. Tried Fdisk, Maxtor's
Powermax utility, Ontrack's Easy Recovery.
Nothing will recognize the drive and I'm not
really sure it's spinning up, can't feel it,
but I can't feel my WD 40gb drive spinning
either. One utility reported unable to access
drive bios, could there be a way to rewrite
the bios on the drive? It still has 2yrs to
go on the warranty, but I'd like to recover
the data if possible (Yeah I know, should
have been backed up, but my other 40gb is
full too...Any ideas?

[jesset]

If you go into the BIOS does it recognize it?

[BFlurie]

Try swapping the power lead to a different "line" from the power supply.

[Shagnasty]

Nope, Nothing recognizes it, Not the bios
nor any utility I've tried so far. I know
that everything else is fine. I've got a
WD 40gb ata/66, Maxtor 30gb ata/66 and a
WD 20gb ata/66, all running fine, even when
swapped around. This one was running fine
right up to the screen freeze, no noise, no
warning...No error from Windows...I doubt it
could since it was running on the drive that
crashed...

[jesset]

Yeah if the BIOS doesn't recognize it then nothing will. Sometimes if you clear NVRAM or the CMOS which is usually a jumper on the motherboard it might work. If the BIOS has the option to Reset Configuration data then try that first. Just write down your settings.

[Shagnasty]

I swapped the power plugs, ribbon cables,
moved it from the ATA/66 slots to the
ATA/33 slots on the MB (BE6II-Raid) and
it still isn't recognized.

[sciport]

I have this pdf file which came from
techrepublic.com (dead link now as far as I can tell).
It's called "200 ways to revive a hard drive"
some of the methods are downright radical.
It's worth a look might be able to get the
drive up long enough to copy off files.
I don't know, I haven't had to try any of this, sort of keeping it around for that
real rainy day.
Of course there are no guarantees implied.
If you'd like it email me (sciport@direct.ca) and I'll forward it to you tonight when I get home from work.

[bdunn]

This sounds dumb but it worked for me once. I had a drive that stopped spinning. I took it out, put it in its anti-static bag and then put it in the freezer for 2 hours. It started right up again and it has been 8 months since and no problems.

[Shagnasty]

Yeah, you're right..it does sound dumb, dumb
as hell...but I swear I must have heard that
somewhere before because I was thinking of
the same thing yesterday...and I'm gonna try
it...Can't hurt...I'm waiting for Fed-Ex to
deliver the new one now so I might as well...
Thanks

[madatthem]

This site is open and the file is available ( after registering for FREE )

http://techrepublic.com/

Originally posted by sciport
I have this pdf file which came from
techrepublic.com (dead link now as far as I can tell).
It's called "200 ways to revive a hard drive"
some of the methods are downright radical.