hard drive has crashed?

Question

the hard drive is not being recongnised at all,so under a 3 yr insurance it has been replaced

i have the old hard drive, and really need to get a ton of pics off it.

so the question is.....can anyone tell me

1. how to connect it to a secondary laptop to see if i can read it

2.Are they ever terminally ill

3.can you remove the disc itself and insert in another hard drive.

Any other advice such as fool you should have backed it up...
unlucky move on also gratefully received...lol

Answer 1

I'm glad to see no one has suggested sticking it in the freezer overnight. This can seriously damage the internal mechanisms of the drive and is definitely NOT recommended.



I had a broken hard drive a little while ago, it constantly made a clicking noise and nothing would load. I left it alone in my room for a few weeks, got a USB Hard Drive caddy, popped it in and it worked enough for me to get most of the important stuff off of there.

This might be something you could try.



A good way to see what sort of condition the disc is in is to watch the computer as it boots. If you have the hard drive still inside the computer and boot it up, you should see the drive in the list of devices on the screen before the computer beeps to tell you everything is ok (or not, depending). If the drive is there then it is still workable and should work in a USB caddy; if the drive doesn't appear then the problem is more serious. If this is the case I highly recommend re-sourcing the pictures on it if possible.



Almost every single photo I have ever taken is on my Flickr account, meaning that not only can I get it anywhere in the world, I don't have to worry about losing them by hard drives failing, or CDs being lost/broken. Just adds a bit more piece of mind for me.

Answer 2

Why would you want pics of it? If it's dead and was replaced under warranty then throw it away.



1. You can connect it to a secondary laptop. There is a panel on the bottom of your laptop held in with four screws probably. However, the connectors on some laptops are a little different so you may not be able to connect it.



2. Yes. Laptops are notorious for having more problems than regular PCs. The hard drive is the most likely piece of hardware to die.



3. No. These are sealed. You can't remove it. If you want the data restored there are services on the web that will do that for you but it can be expensive.

Answer 3

Transferring the disc is nearly impossible. As a last resort, if you have three or four weeks to waste trying, --- Duh.

There are a few IDE to USB devices on the market, or maybe you can reconfigure an external hard drive system to take it. Often, there is a second IDE (or SATA) connector on the main board of the computer that you can plug it in to.

If it does not spin, or the R/W arm is broken, its back to tranferring the disc, otherwise you will need some recovery software.

Several free downloads do not work very well, some paid-for programs are pretty good. Still, if the damage is too bad, the software may not help.

Un-Delete programs are not Recovery Software, they only mess with flags on the file structure.

Answer 4

1) The hard drive should come right out of the laptop. There would be a couple of screws you can unscrew while the machine is totally off and then the harddrive should pull right out, this is without removing the top, however this also depends on the model of lap top. Typically the hard drive is one of the most interchangable aspects of a laptop. My above was for most dell models.



2) Yes. If a hard drive crashes it will only get worse. The reading head hovers over the plates with so little space between that a single particle of smoke can cause the hard drive to crash, once it crashes it will cause debris to break off the plate and that will cause it to crash more. Once a drive crashes once your only hope is to back up as much as you can while you can. One way you know a hard drive is totally dead is they begin to sound like a table saw, a very high pitched grinding sound, somewhat faint, will come from the hard disk.



3) No, if you open up a hard drive to remove a plate you will introduce particles from the air into the very sensative inner chambers of the drive, like I said above, a particle of smoke can kill a hard drive, therefore a particle of dust, a hair, a flake of skin would certainly kill one. Never ever ever open up a hard drive unless you mean to kill it.



There are companies that exist who can salvage information off the hard drive. Consider booting the laptop with a floopy or a boot cd so the hard drive is not needed and then attempt to see if you can get the computer to recognize it and allow you to access the data, this will at least give you some idea as to the nature of the problem. Also consider calling a technician or any friend you know whom deals with computers.

Answer 5

1) I think there are cables to do the trick at newegg. You could even likely get one to connect to a desktop PC. Just look around, great site and I've bought tons of stuff there.



2) Yes they can become terminally ill. I have also hooked up sick drives to a PC as a slave drive. Its a crap shoot, sometimes the PC can see it other times no luck, the bios won;t even see it!



3) I don't understand.



PS I have had good luck also adding the HD into one of those external HD cases and got data back that way. Might give it a shot.

Answer 6

You can remove it and put it in an external hard drive case that plugs into a USB port. This kind of device is known as an external HDD caddy. This is probably a better idea with a laptop as it has limited room for a second hard drive and is quite fiddly compared to a desktop PC.

Answer 7

well nobody can guarantee u that the data can be retrieved but some IT professionals might be able to do but price is

Rs15000 just for trying and u r not even sure if they would be able to retrieve any data. i strongly suggest that u don't tinker with the drive as it could damage the drive more, if u have got money to spare do as i suggested or forget the pics and from next time backup ur data using a portable hard disk and a CD.



YOU CAN NOT REMOVE THE DISK

Answer 8

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