Hard Drive Failure!! Help :(

[Elantastic]

Hope one of you clever people out there can help !! I managed to knock over an Empty glass on my Laptop around the Area where my Hard Drive is, to my horror, after this my computer stopped responding!!
I restarted my laptop and the Hard Drive light flickered then stayed on and windows never booted up I removed the offending unit and tested it seperately on my friends computer using my Hard drive to usb adaptor but there was nothing except a clicking is my only hope spending hundreds on using data recovery company to retrieve my valuable photos and documents!!

Thanks to anyone who can help !!

Gary

[TStevens]

It sounds like a candidate for data recovery

However you may wish to buy a laptop hard drive to IDE convertor cable, this will allow you to hook it straight up to a PC's motherboard. Rather than adding the complication of USB emulation/conversion which could be attributing to your problem.

[Elantastic]

mmm I think the IDE is what I used to test the Hard drive ?? it plugs staight onto the pins of the hard drive and an interface converts it to USB, was your method different to this?
Data Recovery job £312 !! and thats cheap!! could buy a new errrr suspension kit for that!!

Elanscan man !! any ideas!!

[GeoffSmith]

Data recovery isn't cheap and you're not necessarily guaranteed success unfortunately. We had a 120G HDD recovered at work and about the only thing that couldn't be recovered was the small bit that hadn't been backed up. It looked like the head had crashed and taken chunks out of the disc so they did really well to get what they did.

You don't say how long ago you did it: if it wasn't long ago, it could be that the electronics are still damp so it would be worth leaving in a warm dry place (airing cupboard is ideal) for several days. Mind you, if it's managed to find its way onto the disc or heads, then it probably needs taking apart, cleaning with de-ionised water then drying and re-assembling. It's not for the feint hearted though - check this link out.

[TStevens]

No, slightly different cable, it plugs from the laptop hard drive, directly into the PC motherboard (internally), I personally wouldnt trust USB to work propery on a seemingly damaged drive.

Lady in work last year took her laptop home to do some work, brought it in the next day with a sad face. She'd managed to spill a glass of red wine on the laptop, blowing the motherboard, hard drive, ram processor, and knackering the keyboard. Thankfully we have accidental damage cover .

As stated above data recovery is expensive, and theres no guarentee that they will actually lift from the drive what you actually want the most. This is made even harder if your drive was heavily fragmented prior to damage.

[Ghost]

You may be able to claim on your house contents insurance if you have accidental damage cover!

[Ashaman]

I agree TStevens, use an adapter to hook it up to a desktop as a secondary drive.

I am surprised that it affected it, really. Most drives do not have any openings on top that would allow water in. They are supposed to be sealed to prevent any contaminates from entering; so while they might not be waterproof, I would think close enough to handle liquid spilled on a laptop....?

Of course it could damage the controller card, but it seems unlikely. If so, you could probably buy another drive of the same make/model/revision and switch these cards. The problem would be finding one (though Ebay would be a good possibility).

DO NOT DISASSEMBLE THE HARD DRIVE! You will destroy all data and any hope of recovery.

I checked out that link, but I can assure you this is not normally the case. Back in my dumber days I tried the same thing a few times (of course it didn't work); and I can assure you that platter densities were nowhere near what they are now.

[Monty]

This is why it is important to Backup all important Docs and photo`s to CD or an extrernal hard drive.

[Liz]

Better still is some nice RAID5...
(Tony at Liz's house)

[Doug]

(Tony at Liz's house)

[ESM]

Better still is some nice RAID5...
(Tony at Liz's house)

I've got a 'nice' RAID5 setup at home - well I thought it was nice. The trouble was my case only allowed the drives to be housed quite close together (not to clever thermally). This proved not to be a problem and for some months everything worked well. However, last week I got a new CPU and trouble struck.... When the virus scanner ran the extra CPU power meant faster disc access and over the prolonged period of the scan a drive overheated (much beeping and swearing)! It all worked again after it cooled down but I had to disable virus checking and order a new case with more 3.5" disc bays.