Getting a seemingly busted hdd to work

mrapoc · #1 12-01-08, 10:23 PM

Its weird

Its my mate's and it was workin fine until his bro did a defrag seemingly pushed it over the edge (overheat or what :S)

Basically at his i checked all cables were hooked up and basically on startup it said disk failure insert system disk. Then i try starting the windows disk and where you select a partition etc. it says the disk could not be accessed or something. If i press enter to install it bsods.

I then took it home and hooked it up into my ide and windows cannot boot (sticks on windows bar and thats wen loading from my hdd too!!!).

Ideas?

ionicle · #2 12-01-08, 10:27 PM

load up your OS and set it as a slave, you can then retreve files from it, reformat it, and voila...

i think anyway..

mrapoc · #3 12-01-08, 10:33 PM

It wont detect if i start the os first will it? (as in needs to boot with it connected surely)

Wen i try to boot with it connected it foobars my existing install so i cant boot. :S

jabski · #4 13-01-08, 01:40 AM

stick it in the freezer.

It want make it last forever thou. Make sure to get important data first

mrapoc · #5 13-01-08, 06:59 AM

Will i need to put it in a sandwich bag or something to stop the majority of condensation or w/e

Or just shove it in

Leave for a couple of hours

Hook it up

Get data

Buy new hdd

Strange thing is - bios only detects it when its not in a series with my cd drive (only got one IDE)

Might wack it into old pc downstairs, run killdisk (to zero the hdd) and see whay happens

How can i check hdd life to determine if its actually gone to heaven/hell

Toxteth O'Grady · #6 13-01-08, 06:29 PM

Enable S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) for the disk in your bios and check it's status with something like PC Wizard or Speedfan

TOG

Toxcity · #7 13-01-08, 06:41 PM

Sam, have you set it as a slave.

If not you will end up with the freezing at boot.

ali_james · #8 13-01-08, 07:02 PM

If it doesn't want to work with or without another device on the IDE channel (I'm guessing it doesn't) there should be a little jumper which you can change to slave position. Like said above, if you can get it into windows or whatever try something to look at the SMART.

mrapoc · #9 13-01-08, 07:44 PM

Oh right

Didnt know i had to change the jumper (should have looked at the message on the top saying "No jumper = slave" lol

Will get back to you

mrapoc · #10 13-01-08, 08:52 PM

Did it

booted

detected and installed...its in device manager

nothing in my computer

nothing in disk management

detected in bios

windows setup cannot access the disk

killdisk just throws an error