# Can my HDD be saved? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 20, 2002, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975 "2002-06-20T00:03:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/1 "2002-06-20T00:03:11Z")
I have an IBM HDD that was taking a long time to spinup and was making grinding noises. once it spun up everything was fine. I bought an 80gb drive to copy it to, powered down installed the drive now the old drive won’t work. It clicks twice, stops and when the Bios goes to detect it, it reports it as a strane name sometimes just … other times a box and … or just random letters. Is there anything I can do to access my data and move it. I did have a backup, but a few of the cd’s are bad so the backup won 't restore. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/2 "2002-06-20T00:48:55Z")
Sounds like a mechanical drive failure. Heads or drive, I dunno If so, color it, and it’s contents, gone for all practical purposes. There _are_ services that speciallize in recovering the contents of damaged drives, but they’re usually too expense to bother with. ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/3 "2002-06-20T00:54:24Z")
Will it spin up at all? If not, you might try taking it out of the case and shaking it. Yes, while it’s plugged in and the PC is running. This sounds stupid, but it will sometimes get a dying drive spinning long enough to get data off. **Disclaimer:** don’t attempt this unless you have enough PC hardware experience not to hurt yourself. Don’t touch anything on the underside of the drive while it’s plugged in. This technique is obviously a last resort and should never be done with a healthy drive. ---
**Author:** ![mblackwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5fc32e/32.png) [@mblackwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mblackwell)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/4 "2002-06-20T00:54:59Z")
I have heard of people opening them up and helping it spin up with their fingers. Of course it totally destroys the drive, but sometimes it will run long enough like that to get data off. ---
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/5 "2002-06-20T01:24:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Number \* > \*\*Will it spin up at all? If not, you might try taking it out of the case and shaking it. Yes, while it’s plugged in and the PC is running. This sounds stupid, but it will sometimes get a dying drive spinning long enough to get data off. > \*\* it sounds like it is spinning up but when it reports back to the system what model it is, it shows up as garbage ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/6 "2002-06-20T01:53:29Z")
If the drive is spinning and you get output in the BIOS that is munged it sounds like the Master Boot Record is hosed. IIRC, the MBR has the drive info along with the other information. There are ways to hack the MBR but I don’t know of any programs off the top of my head. Google on it and you should come up with something. (I could be wrong about this) Next, have you removed the 80 gig drive and reinstalled the original drive using the original cable? The cable matters. I installed a new HD and used the old cable and it didn’t work. I called up tech support and switching cables fixed the issue. Last, if none of the above work you could try yanking your BIOS battery for 24 hours or so to reset the BIOS. Do this only if you understand how to reset the BIOS info. Slee ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/7 "2002-06-20T01:58:56Z")
I’m afraid it doesn’t sound good. Time to try all the things that shouldn’t work but sometimes does anyway, like removing and re-connecting all the cables, connecting the drive to a different computer, using different cables, changing the orientation (flip the drive upside down or on its side) and as already mentioned, shaking the drive. Also try to find out if you can restore parts of the backup which are still good. If you used compression, chances aren’t good. If you didn’t, you can probably read the disks which are still good. Also the “bad” disks may be readable on other CD-ROM drives, so try a few. Also, did you say the drive stopped working just when you installed the new drive? Could it be a conflict between the two drives? Try removing the new drive and see if the old one works. ---
**Author:** ![jmizzou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/edb3f5/32.png) [@jmizzou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jmizzou)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/8 "2002-06-20T03:45:19Z")
If you absolutely, positively can’t get it to work, and you’ve tried every other suggestion under the sun and are about to write the whole thing off, try this novel method: Stick it in the freezer. No, seriously. Take the hard drive out of your computer and put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes to an hour. Take it out and _immediately_ put the hard drive back in the computer. With luck, you can get a good 15-30 minutes of access to it, which should give you enough time to copy over your important files to another hard drive. No one knows exactly _why_ this works, but most people think that it a) keeps an overheating hard drive cooled off and b) hardens the platters and strengthens the drive heads. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/9 "2002-06-20T03:45:57Z")
Sounds like a hardware issue but just in case it is a trashed master boot record try this. Set the misbehaving drive as the master boot drive (disconnect the new one temporarily) Make a boot floppy with fdisk on it and when the system has booted up type “fdisk /mbr”. see FDISK /MBR Rewrites the Master Boot Record (Q69013) > [@](#): > > SUMMARY > The MS-DOS Fdisk utility usually updates the master boot record (MBR) only if no master boot record exists. Repartitioning with Fdisk does not rewrite this information. > > Fdisk has an undocumented parameter called /mbr that causes it to write the master boot record to the hard disk without altering the partition table information. Probably won’t help but it can’t hurt. ---
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/10 "2002-06-20T07:51:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sleestak \* > \*\* > > Next, have you removed the 80 gig drive and reinstalled the original drive using the original cable? The cable matters. I installed a new HD and used the old cable and it didn’t work. I called up tech support and switching cables fixed the issue. > \*\* Yes I tried removing the 80gb drive no go. I tried the drive in another system also no go. \*\* Last, if none of the above work you could try yanking your BIOS battery for 24 hours or so to reset the BIOS. Do this only if you understand how to reset the BIOS info. Slee \*\* [/QUOTE] I know all my bios settings but I don’t see why resetting the BIOS wich also can be done by jumper would cure this. ---
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/11 "2002-06-20T07:56:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by scr4 \* > I’m afraid it doesn’t sound good. Time to try all the things that shouldn’t work but sometimes does anyway, like removing and re-connecting all the cables, connecting the drive to a different computer, using different cables, changing the orientation (flip the drive upside down or on its side) and as already mentioned, shaking the drive. Tried that, tried new cables too. I flipped the drive every way I could think of but no luck. > [@](#): > > Also try to find out if you can restore parts of the backup which are still good. If you used compression, chances aren’t good. If you didn’t, you can probably read the disks which are still good. Also the “bad” disks may be readable on other CD-ROM drives, so try a few. Unfortuantly I don’t know how to do this with the backup software I was using. I used a trial copy of Retrospect and can’t figure out how to restore just selected cd’s. > [@](#): > > Also, did you say the drive stopped working just when you installed the new drive? Could it be a conflict between the two drives? Try removing the new drive and see if the old one works. The drive was giving me problems every time I powered it off but it was passing IBM’s tests. Thats why I bought a new drive because I knew this drive was going to die soon. ---
**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/12 "2002-06-20T09:40:52Z")
I already posted some methods for reviving hard drives in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=120757). Take a look at this PDF doc: [200 ways to revive a dead hard drive](http://www.midwayisd.org/PDFs/help/200ways.pdf). In short, the top 3 ways are Freeze it, Hit it, and Drop it. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2002, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/13 "2002-06-20T17:12:52Z")
It could be a PCB (printed circuit board) failure. If your new drive is the same model as the old one, you can try to replace the controller card on the old drive with the one on the new drive. _Exercise extreme caution with this operation_ ---
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2002, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-my-hdd-be-saved/114975/14 "2002-06-21T22:33:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jmizzou \* > \*\*If you absolutely, positively can’t get it to work, and you’ve tried every other suggestion under the sun and are about to write the whole thing off, try this novel method: > > Stick it in the freezer. > > No, seriously. Take the hard drive out of your computer and put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes to an hour. Take it out and _immediately_ put the hard drive back in the computer. With luck, you can get a good 15-30 minutes of access to it, which should give you enough time to copy over your important files to another hard drive. No one knows exactly _why_ this works, but most people think that it a) keeps an overheating hard drive cooled off and b) hardens the platters and strengthens the drive heads. \*\* I too heard of doing that so I did. I woke up at 10:30 yesterday, put the drive in an anti-staic bag then went out to a taping of a MTV show (Will Smith promoting MIB II) came home around 5:30, took a nap. Took the drive out of the freezer and oput of it’s bag. At this point afraid of condensation on the power connector I tried the drive in a system I didn’t care about. It didn’t spin up this time either but it made a grinding sign which was good, because prevaiously it would make the sound for 20 min or so then be usable (thus the reason I bought the new drive) The grinding stopped so I did a ctrl-alt-del and it sees the drive and the right size. I haven’t moved it to the other computer yet to do the drive transfer only because I’m afraid of powering it down (I’ve done reboots doing ctrl-alt-del and the drive responds fine) I’m going to prep my system for it again and move it quickly hoping it doen’t die again. If it does back to the freezer it goes