Recovering Data off of a Dead HDD.

As you can see by the topic title, my hard drive is dead. I've already tried Knoppix, but it wouldn't boot. However, it'll boot on my laptop. Could it be something else as well? I'm at a loss here.

 

1) Does the bios detect the drive?
2) Does it make any clicking noises?
3) Does the hdd indicator light stay lit when it's the only drive plugged in?
4) Can you hear it/feel it spin up? (if you hear nothing on #2)

 

Yes, no, yes, yes.

 

Definately shot.

As for recovery, it's probably the heads that are gone. If you must have the data back you can either swap the platters into a working drive of the exact same model or pay someone else to. I'd suggest the latter as it's difficult to do it yourself and easy to botch it.

 

How far through boot does it get? Does it display anything like filenames before the activity light becomes permanently on? Have you looked for and tried the HDD manufacturer's repair tool?

 

It's dead now. It won't even spin. Thanks for the help anyway. I really appreciate it.

 

The PCB swap is surprisingly easy - little more than a few screws, zero technical knowledge required. Well worth investigating if you can find your drive's twin.

 

I tried doing that once.. search lots of sites and finaly found one that was the same model.. but ofcourse it was a different pcb revision and therefore didn't work with my old disc

 

Yes, you must have EXACTLY the same drive to swap PCB - revision and all.

Ontrack would be able to recover it. They'll charge you around $1200-1500.

With your original description, there would be an 80% chance I'd be able to recover data without a swap-out. As it is, it sounds likr a platter swap is in order, for which you need an identical drive and a clean room (i.e. atmosphere controlled, men in white suits). There's probably a 20% chance of recovering anything without doing that.

 

It was some music and pictures. Nothing of amazing importance.

 

uhm i wouldnt advice on doing that at your ikea kitchentable (platterswap) i mean i could do something like that at work but my workplace is a cleanroom if you do the platterswap at home first particle hitting the surface of the platter would start a chainreaction of killing everything other (your normal air in a city has like millions of particles if you live on the mountains with cleanest air you have still like 10.000 particles per cubic feet - cleanroom has like 1-10 particels per cubic feet depending on use)