Please Help resque the harddisk data

[junglemike]

Hello. All of a sudden my secondry master harddisk (maxtor 80gb) gone bad. It is still seen in device manager, and opens in explorer, but when i try to read or write from it - the speed is about 30kb/s - slower than a floppy. First I ckecked DMA issue. Than I tried to put it in another IDE channel (primary slave instead of seconary master) - I also tried forcing PIO mode in bios - notheing helps.

I can't copy my documents away from this harddisk. Once I start copy process (it shows 30kb/s) - than i get an error.
If i try to run scandisk - Windows freezes..
I even put this harddisk in my second computer, and all is the same there.

I looked in google for help - and found some Maxtor disk utility - but it creates bootable floppy. I don't have floppy drive in any computer.
What else can i do?

 

[brinks]

If nothing else works put your hard drive in the freezer for an hour and try again.

 

[junglemike]

That's interesting. I'll try that.
Listen, I'm trying to boot from Maxtor Disk utility floppy . The thing i have no ploppy drive in any computer. I downloaded the PowerMax utility (for checking problems w/ maxtor disks) It said that It cannot continue because i have no floppy drive.
Than I downloaded this opensource virtual floppy drive here: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#download
Made an emulated floppy drive. Than I run PowerMax tool again. It created these files on the virtual diskette:

The question: Can I somehow transfer those files on CD-rom?
So that i can boot this PowerMax diagnostic utitlity from cd-rom.
But i guess if I just burn those files on CD - the cd will not be bootable (as diskette ment to be)
Can anybody help me ? How can i make a bootable cd-rom w/ those files?

 

[brinks]

Do you have nero burning rom?

 

[junglemike]

Yes,

 

[cloud]

can i ask what putting it in the freezer does?

 

[Ste]

can i ask what putting it in the freezer does?

This is only a guess, but If the drive suffered a mechanical failure, the cold would contract the Metal and Components within the drive long enough for you to copy important data. I never tried it myself, but have heard many success stories.

 

[cloud]

wow i never would have thought of that