The dreaded worst has just happened to me...

My notebook (my primary computer) that I just bought in Sept., now has a HD that won't spin up. It was running fine up until this point. I came home from work today to sit in front of the machine and had a blue screen greet me. It said there was a failure and it was doing a physical memory dump. (If I'm not mistaken, this screen usually pops up for a moment then disappears - but it was just sitting there this time).. When I rebooted, I got a "Operating System Not Found".

The drive will not even spin up now. I tried to power it up in other machines, but it's as if no power is getting to it.

Does anyone know of a data recovery business that doesn't think I have the budget of Boeing? Someone also suggested that I buy an identical drive and swap the board.... eek!

I'm so bumm'd out over this. I just moved all of this data from other machines onto this drive to "secure it" (because the computer is new) until I could back it up. I have a bunch of stuff on there - but the stuff that's upsetting me the most is my wedding photos.... I took 300 over the course of my wedding and honeymoon - all digital. And these companies want to charge me upwards of $1200....

SO STRESSED RIGHT NOW. I thought HD's were supposed to give a warning before they took a dump.

Greetings!

I would not recommend trying to swap the board on a laptop drive. The tolerances are so small that you may do more harm than good. Are there any blatent physical issues? (bent or broken pins, connector problems, tried it in a different machine, etc)

I have never tried a data recovery service before. From the sound of it, they did give you some quotes. What kind of drive was it?

It's a 30GB Toshiba drive that came w. my Sony VAIO. I did try the drive on a PC (w. a 2.5" adapter) and even on the empeg to see if I could hear it spin up. Nada. No spin or even the sound of the motor trying to spin.

I had limited seccond had experience with some data recovery, and the one thing I came away with was that it isn't cheap. There was a large up front fee for them to look at the drive, then a cost per megabyte of data recovered.

Though it seems like you've moved it around a bit, I've found on a couple occasions with failing drives that bumping/shaking them a bit when they won't spin up gets it to work long enough to get the data off.

Matthew

Valid point. Especially if the drive is just jammed. Also, see if the drive is being compressed or if there is any pressure on the bottom of the drive that could be causing drag on the spindle.

How do you spin these things? When I open the drive, will it be abundantly clear? I know enough to NOT expose the platters.

I've never opened the actual drive. I'd just try plugging it in and supplying power, and then gently shake it a bit from side to side. It's not really a scientific process, but just something i've had work before. I have heard of people opening drives up and manually helping the motor start (maybe on this bbs), but by that point you really should have decided that your only other option is throwing the drive in the trash. If you do go that route, make sure you've got it on a non-essential IDE connector, as who knows what it might fry.

Matthew

Sorry, man. That sucks. I was only one step away from your situation about a month ago, and I was looking at data recovery services too. I checked out some company called Disk Doctors or something, because I thought I had heard of them on TechTV. There's a reason they didn't really give their prices over the air. I saw they had an office near me, so I called them up and asked for a quote without shipping. It was something like $400 to $450 just to look at it and get the data off, and then you had to pay for what whatever means you wanted of getting the data back to you, meaning you basically had to buy another hard drive from them.

Luckily, I was able to solve my problem for nothing instead of $600+

I hope you have the same luck. I doubt any companies are going to be cheap by any means.

I had a 40GB Quantum SCSI drive in an old Mac that I had to bang with quite a lot of force onto the desk to get to spin up. I used it in that state as my primary boot drive for about two years. Never lost a single file.

I had a laptop drive that would not spin-up too. I took it apart and freed the stuck head. Put it back together and it worked. I was able to get my data off the drive and I imagine I could have continued to use it however I defiantly did not trust it anymore.

I know everyone is shrieking in horror because I did not wear a space suit in a clean room but it worked and did not cost me $1200.

Be warned this might not work and you will likely loose your warranty.

You actually freed the head?! Wow! I thought you meant spindle at first, but when you mentioned a clean room I figured you meant what you typed! Wow!

Does the "bang the drive" thing work with stuck heads? Or is it more for seized bearings? (One last question): Does the "banging" method only work if you can hear the drive trying to spin up?

Does the "banging" method only work if you can hear the drive trying to spin up?

All the drives I have ever "fixed" by banging them have at least been trying to spin up. I have never had a drive that didn't even try to spin the platters...

Call me a lucky SOB but I tried the "tapping" thing to no avail. Then I got this sudden urge to open the drive and spin the platters by hand!! I gave it a few turns, the closed it up. And it's working now!

Everything is being backed up to a firewire drive at the moment. I REALLY hate this WinXP Home "restore" feature but it will have to do for now. Is Norton Ghost the way to go?

Congratulations!

You are extremely lucky!!! I am glad it worked out for you!

I had the same problem with an old 1G quantum drive. I had to open it up and start up the spindle by hand. I was kinda cool watching the head move back and forth.

Great to hear that you've managed to recover it! That's the one problem about digital photos I've found. It's so easy to accidently do something and make them vanish forever! At least I have to physically destroy both the negatives and prints when using normal film.
Just remember to mount the drive on the wall somewhere as a reminder to make backups

- Trevor

Great to hear that you've managed to recover it! That's the one problem about digital photos I've found. It's so easy to accidently do something and make them vanish forever! At least I have to physically destroy both the negatives and prints when using normal film.
Just remember to mount the drive on the wall somewhere as a reminder to make backups

- Trevor

I'm gonna start a data recovery business I think! $600 to smack a drive off a desk or open it and free the spindle? Easy!

Should be quite lucrative! If it works then you charge them. If it doesn't then you just say "Sorry. It's too knackered"

- Trevor

Thats exactly my thinking. Most companies will pay me rather than do it themselves cos they can't be bothered and its easier to give me the money. I'll also undercut all other data recovery companies.

Zero overheads... a website and a computer. Yes! I can retire before I'm 24!

(nobody else steal my idea)

Edit: I'm seriously considering this actually!

You should market the patented Phillip O'Hare DIY Data Recovery Kit (tm) A nice shrinkwrapped package consisting of a rubber mallet, security Torx bit and a pair of lint free gloves

I think the hardest part of your plan really is to get started. If you can get a few companies to give you a try then word of mouth should keep you going. A flashy professional looking website would be good as well. I've met loads of people that judge a company based on how nice the website looks.

Once you've done a few drives then you can splash out on a copy of a NTFS/FAT32/ext2 undelete utility.

And you've got no competition from me so don't worry

- Trevor

It can't fail ! Yes, potential client's impressiveness varies directly with website flashiness.

One problem I'm having is retreiving my Outlook Contact List and email. I am able to access by "damaged drive" by connecting it to another PC as a D drive. So, my old notebook's main drive is now viewable and browseable as just another drive.

Browsing through, I can't find any .pst file that would have all of this. Does Outlook only create this when you do an Export? How can I find the emails and Contacts?

I believe it only creates a .pst file if you do an export. Also when you do an export you have to select what items you want exported.

It's in \Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME_HERE\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. At least it's there on the version of Outlook I'm using anyway.

Everything should be in the Outlook.pst file unless you've changed it.

- Trevor

It's in \Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME_HERE\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. At least it's there on the version of Outlook I'm using anyway. The Local Settings directory is marked hidden BTW.

Everything should be in the Outlook.pst file unless you've changed it.

- Trevor

If you syncronize your email, the email and contacts will be in .ost file (at least for Outlook 2000). If you do, then you will have to get a third party program to convert it to a .pst file (at least I had to get one to read the contents.)

If you syncronize your email, the email and contacts will be in .ost file (at least for Outlook 2000). If you do, then you will have to get a third party program to convert it to a .pst file (at least I had to get one to read the contents.)

Thanks guys! I was missing that "Local Settings" folder when I was looking for it because it's a hidden folder (and a hidden file after that). I still can't believe I managed to get the data off of this thing!

Weird. It's always been a PST file for me. Even with Outlook 2000.

- Trevor