Omg I Think My Hardrives Dead! Hellp Me!

[GreenTeaBagger]

it was just working about 6 hours from now. I started the computer up. It goes through all the bios stuff. When it tries to detect my harddrive it just says "UDMA 6" not the usual Maxtor Hardrive. after it says "computer did not shut down properly....blah blah blah. I've tried "safe mode", "Last know good config" and "start normally. What happens is my monitors turn off and the computer restarts when i choose anything. I go into BIOS and i go to boot selection order but the "maxtor" harddrive name is still in the boot selection menu. I then tried to reinsert and boot from my windows CD. It says i dont have any storage device or whatever and states the the computer will restart in a few seconds...I my harddrive dead or what? What can I do to possibly recover my files? I have alot of stuff on it and I dont want to loose all of it...HELLLP!

EDIT: It's one of those $99.00 300gb Maxtor drives on newegg...CURSE YOU MAXTOR!

 

[COD2_fanatic]

well for one thign Maxtor sucks. (use Seagate or Western Digital)

Stick it in another computer and backup anything if at all possbile, if you cant do that, find an old HD and set it as the Master and put XP on it temporarly and see what you can do

 

[GreenTeaBagger]

Hey COD fanatic thanks for the reply. Im actually gonna try the Freezer trick (Hope it doesnt mess up the drive even MORE! I put it in 2 Ziplocks just to be on the safe side tho) and burn all i can on some CDS until it dies again...gonna but a 80 gig SATA drive next week tho...Seagate or Western Digital?

Edit: Whoa. Im totally getting this drive...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822135106

 

[Nitestick]

the real danger with putting the hdd in the freezer isn't so much being exposed to the inside of the freezer, it's being exposed to cold air. that means you must be sure to squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag otherwise it will condense in the cold and form moisture on the hdd.

is the drive SATA or IDE? i'm guessing IDE. did you make sure the cable was connected properly? you wouldn't believe the number of bizzare symptoms that can result from problems with IDE drives or their connection.

 

[SYL\X/3K]

i had exact same problem with my seagate in my bios is said something else then usual and it turned out to be the IDE cable which was dead

 

[baronvongogo]

the freezer should be the last ditch effort and even then its just to retrieve data not to heal the hard drive as it`ll fail after a few hours.

Download maxtor powermax:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...oftware Downloads/All Downloads&downloadID=22

there's a floppy and ISO image version.

when you run it do a full scan see if it does detect problems. Try different power and IDE cables.

but once you do the freezer thing there's only a slim chance it`ll work and even then u`ll need to be quick to get data off it.

 

[bmxfreakrider]

yea i did the freezer trick once, put it in a ziploc and va***ed the air out, left it in for like an hour, and got about 2gb out of 4gb of crap off of a 6gb maxtor...never had a prob with a wd/seg hdd, just max

 

[GreenTeaBagger]

hey guys...the maxtor drive that i assumed dead is now operational once i put it as a slave to my new sata drive. should i use it to store files again? or after i had copied as much from it to my new drive...should i dissconnect it? Cause i can access the files after i assigned it as a slave...but when i try to boot windows from it it wont boot...what the **** is happeneing!?

 

[baronvongogo]

run check disk on it and run powermax on it again unless you never bothered before

 

[GreenTeaBagger]

YAY! I can get all my fiels back now! ill run checkdisk after i transfer...i dont want all my music to dissappear again!