hdd problem

[dano]

HI everybody. I have a very serious problem with my hdd.
It stopped working and when i power it up it make a weird noise.
BIOS doesn't recognize the device.
Does it mean that it is dead?
I have some important data on it and I didn't back it up.
Is it possible to recover any data from the hdd?
Thanks

p.s. It is a
SAMSUNG SpinPoint P80 Series SP1614N 160GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive - OEM

 

[Ste]

Its possible to recover the data.

However if it doesn't detect the drive and you cannot access it from a PC, youll have to pay big bucks to have a company do it.

If the Harddrive is making "clicking" like sound. Then yea its pretty much dead.

 

[dano]

hmm so there is no way to fix it with tools that a regular user has?
what companies recover data?

 

[Ste]

If you open up a harddrive you will currupt all data on it. Unless your in a level 10 Dust free "clean Room". (Which is what these companies I mentioned do.)

Just google it.

You should first try the drive as slave in another computer to copy the data over.

 

[dano]

heh i still have warranty on it. but sumsung says they dont recover data.. ... hmm maybe i get lucky and its something wrong with the head and they just replace the head...

 

[Ste]

heh i still have warranty on it. but sumsung says they dont recover data.. ... hmm maybe i get lucky and its something wrong with the head and they just replace the head...

Doubtful: Its easier to just give you a new drive.

So try backing the data up on your own, if not google data recovery.

 

[EricB]

I give this advice a lot.

buy you a cheap 15-40 gig hard drive to run windows. use those big drives as storeage. never use a big drive to run windows, even if you use different partitions on it

there is too much activty going on as your os drive spins too much. what would you rather replace. a 20 gig with just windows on it or a 200 gig with everything on it?

I have 700 gig of hdd space, yet my I have my windows on one 40 gig drive. it is a dual boot system. mce 2005 and xp home sp1.

the storage drive only get access when I want to use something on them. they don't spin that much. windows is doing 50 different things at once on it's hdd