Slave Drive Stopped Closed

Question

Hello,
 I have a WD 400BB Hard Drive from an older computer. I decided to make it a second drive for my music and photos. I formatted it and it worked Excellent for the purpose it was intended for and named it my D Drive. I few weeks ago I was saving a Photo on it and all of a sudden my computer froze. I had to do the unthinkable and turn the power off. When I Rebooted I was hearing this wining scratching sound. Not the clicking of death but different. I thought it was my C Drive so I hurried up and backed up my C drive thinking that was the problem. I rebooted again and the noise was gone. I did not think of it being my D Drive untill I went to Listen to some music and the shortcut said Drive could not be found. I knew then it was my D Drive. I had backed up some of the files but the last month or so I did not. I lost a lot of photos of my grandson and others.
  I started checking on the web for problems and salutions. I tried changing the circuit board on the hard drive with 1 that was from the same date and ID numbers as mine with no luck. I have even tried using an IDE adapter to USB. The Hard Drive will turn on. you can feel and hear the disks running and when you first turn it on you can hear the head moving.
  When I plug it in to the USB slot you can hear the ding that it is there and it also shows up in Device Mangaer. I tried this with both circuit boards on and the same thing happens. It is detected in Device Manager and says that it is working fine but I do not see it in Windows in My Computer. I have even tried changing the drive letters from my new hard drive from D to V in case there was a conflict with the Drive letter assignments. But windows does not recognize the hard drive. It would not be a big deal for the songs but, I would like to try to get my photos back if possible.
  I don't know if I got a virus that caused it to crash or if it is something internal. Or if I lost something through a bad sector or something. I did remove the cover just long enough to see if the disks were turning and the head was moving and they were. I quickly put it back together.
  Is this a lost cause , can I do something to gat back my photos with out the expense of a data recovery lab?
Because if that is the case then my photos will be lost for ever.

xpcman · Answer

It's a lost cause.

The sounds coming from the D drive are ominous.    A recovery lab would disassemble the drive, remove the data disk(s) and install them in a working drive.  All this needs to be done in a "clean room" under controlled conditions. Your dis-assembly did not help.   

Some people report that freezing the drive (place in an air tight zip lock bag first)  and then quickly installing it back in the PC is a temporary fix that allows them to recover data.  But it's too late to even try that.

Sorry

Berk · Answer

Yes I figured it might be a lost cause but, I did try the freezer thing first with no good results.  I have heard of taking it a part and checking it to see if it was working. If it did work it would work good enough to get the data off of it. I have even heard of changing the heads from a working one to at least get the data off. but the head is moving and the disks are turning. I am thinking that maybe a sector or some thing to that nature is bad or corrupted and it won't let windows recognize it. But I really don't think that would explain the wining sound that was comming from it.
  As far as sending it to a data recovery lab. It would have to be some pretty good data on it to fork out that kind of change. I just thought that some one might have read this and has tried some thing that may have worked.
Well I'll hang on to it for now and maybe some day I'll get an answer to try.

Work to Live / Don't Live to Work

Slave Drive Stopped

2 responses

Similar discussions

Subscribe To Our Newsletter!