possible to recover?

[mikechinym]

hi,
recently i bought a new 40gb harddisk ata from western digital
after i use for half year,its just got some bad sector/cluster
the main question is, now i cannot access the drive and i had important data in that drive
it just CANNOT ACCESS through winxp or even win9x or even by recovery toolkits
is it possible to recover it??
it is use for storing data only(no os inside)

[Polaris573]

There is a chance that it can be recovered by professionals, but you have to send the drive away. Don't know how much it costs to have it done but if the data is really important it's worth it.

[Aevum]

freeze it, roll it in napkins so it dosnt suck up moisture , put it in a zip lock bag, toss it in the freezer,

have a usb harddrive connector ready to plug it in when directly after you get it out of the freezer, the colder it is, the better your chances are,

it dosnt always work, but it does sometimes, and its worth a try,

[W2hCYK]

Most places I've seen are asking $250+ per hour, and a $150 charge if nothing can be recovered. That was the cheapest. My friend has a drive, he let it sit for 3 weeks, and was able to recover half of the drive before it crapped again, he said he's going to let it sit all summer before he tries again.

We tried the freezer thing, I think a better way to do it(more risky) is to put it into a few ziplock bags, stick it in ice water, and run it directly from beside your computer. either that or run the USB and power into the freezer. Keep it cold, it does work. We also tried the freezer thing on his HD, and it recovered a bit of data. He's got about 60% recovered.

And a 3rd option, if you can risk it, is to buy the same drive as the one that broke, remove the read/write arm, and replace it with the old one. that is one of the main parts that usually go dead in a hard drive. if you can, poke in there to see if the arm's chip is cooked. change the arms at the same time, swap them, and toss both into the other drive, then test both drives, if the newer drive still works, you have a bigger problem on your hands with your corrupted drive than some DIY repair.

Google self hard drive repair, or hard drive arm repair. one or the other, i think they show a tutorial.

If you do the second part, I suggest use a bathroom, steam it up as much as possible, let the steam settle, and then begin working, do so every 15 mins, and place your hard drive inside a ziplock baggy, loose enough so that its not touching the hard drive too tight. steaming the air will make it so that all the dust settles on the bottom of the floor. use a mouth filter, hair net, gloves, goggles, ect, to make sure no contaminates get into the drive.

i'm not responsible if this is to screw up the drive, honestly, the way I'd do it is pay for the recovery if it is worth enough to you.

Those are all of the HD recovery fixes i've heard of so far

[mikechinym]

wow,i got so much professional ideas,i will try to freeze it
coz if i send to warranty,they surely not going to backup my data.
if there is still a chance to recover it,i wont let go.
i will try the ideas ur given,thank you so much guys

[Polaris573]

I wouldn't suggest taking it apart yourself if you have valuable data on it. Even one grain of sand or a hair can completely destroy your hard drive and the data with it. If your data is only semi-valuable, it would be a fun experiment though.

[DanTheBanjoman]

What errors exactly are you getting? Is it detected by the BIOS? Does Windows detect it? Where exactly does it fail, what are the messages you get?

[mikechinym]

problem solve,i am getting 80% of my data back by the freezing technique.
i put the hdd into freezer for a while then take it out and boom,i get the data recover.
all my documents are recover,only some big image file not being recover.
thanks for Polaris573 and W2hCYK.
now i am going to send the drive to warranty.

almost forget,for the moderator.
the hdd is detected by bios nd windows.i can see the drive at the windows.
when i click at it,it takes a long time to read and then the error message cames out "need to format the hdd before able to access."
but now freezng technique solve it

[W2hCYK]

freeze it for 3 days and you'll probably get the other 20%

i dont understand what freezing it does, but it works!

[KennyT772]

w2hcyk..
the lower temps make the platters shrink by ever so much that most times it alleviates the problem that corrupts the drive - damaged read/write heads that are out of spec for the distance they should be for the platters. most of the time they bend down due to gravity and the freezing trick makes the gap alot smaller. thats why most times over half of the drive is salvagable (the underside of the platter) but the other half isnt,

[eefrit]

well..next time just don't buy western digital...they got some neat performance...but not for durability...
i've used my seagate 40gb for 3 years...never had any problems...:)