May 25, 2004

1:38 PM

A few days ago, my computer froze up (no big deal), but when I rebooted, my hard drive couldn't be detected. The drive died with absolutely no warning. I tried various methods to get the OS to find it, with no luck. Two technicians have since looked at the drive and conluded it's a physical problem and that it's toast.

Who's had the same experience and what did you do?
posted by davebush to (7 comments total)

Replaced it and started from scratch. I did it "right" and put all my data on its own partition to make it easy to back it up and so I wouldn't wipe it out if I ever needed to reinstall the OS.

Think of it as a clensing.

If you lost anything of great value there are recovery services that can help you out. You'll pay for it though.
posted by bondcliff at 1:51 PM on May 25, 2004

I had the same thing happen. The hard drive was replaced and the old one was thrown out.
posted by The God Complex at 1:56 PM on May 25, 2004

This has happened to me twice. All you can do is back up regularly and buy a new drive.

Sometimes hard drives die. It's what they do with the time they have that counts....
posted by o2b at 2:21 PM on May 25, 2004

if you're a fighter, maybe see if another computer will detect the drive. I had a problem like that ages ago and it turned out that my power supply was the problem, so you never know!
posted by mcsweetie at 3:21 PM on May 25, 2004

Sometimes it's not the hard drive - sometimes it's the IDE Controller and the hard drive is just fine.

Sometimes.
posted by jaded at 3:27 PM on May 25, 2004

Thanks for the feedback. I've had the drive in 2 other computers - each one failed to recognize it.

Although I've got 3 years of design files (swf, ai and psd) on it, I've accepted that it's all gone. Thankfully, all the websites I've done can be retrieved.

I have to admit, part of me sorta likes the whole purging thing. Maybe it was meant to happen for some reason.
posted by davebush at 3:39 PM on May 25, 2004

If you're a very, very brave man, there is another option.

Swap the drive control mechanism. If you really value the data, (and raw design files are gold, man!) buy an identical drive and swap the circuit boards around. If this doesn't work, there is one final solution (da da duuum!) If the control board is OK, then the problem is likely with the drive heads, which means you have to swap the platters. Open up the Winchester cavity (they usually use annoying security-bit screws) in a dust-free environment, don't touch the platters except on the sides, be very, very careful, and it's possible to exchange platters.

I'd have an additional drive to dump the data you can retrieve, because once you open up that drive, it ain't gonna work for much longer. Dust will creep in whether you see it or not. I've done this before on a 10 gig drive, and was able to save about half of the data. Better than none.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:17 PM on May 25, 2004