www.deadharddrive.com

[zflynn]

I had an unbootable, clicking drive that all the "experts" said was definitely dead and unrecoverable other than by "experts" in a clean room. I read from data recovery sites and an article that claimed that the clicking sound was the head banging against the platters and that I would damage the data forever if I didn't IMMEDIATELY stop trying to recover the data and send it to a special place that could do the data recovery. Sounded like a boatload of manure and my suspicions were confirmed when I read one data recovery place that said I wouldn't have to pay them if they didn't recover 100% of my data. Well for them to make that guarantee I knew it must be really rare to lose all your data. Then I read a lot of different stories like those posted here. One guy said he had routinely opened hard drives at his desk and was able to recover all the data from them, often with them running with an open face plate. Someone else mentioned that the CLICKING sound was actually the drive turning off and on. Well that seemed to make more sense than a crashed head. I tried freezing the drive three times but it didn't work, win XP still didn't recognize the drive. Neither did Linux. So I found the duplicate hard drive on Amazon and bought it and then switched the logic board from my "dead" drive with the new drive of identical model number and FIRMWARE number (important but often overlooked). It took less than a minute using a Torx screwdriver and removing four screws on each board. (Maybe an expert can do it in less than HALF a minute). The drive was now recognized by Win XP but still corrupted and unreadable. Used Easy recovery Pro and was able to recover 100% of my 200 gigs worth of files that I was told would be completely corrupted if I didn't send it to the "pros". My total cost: less than $50. The "pros" ESTIMATES (which they all said might be more once they evaluated it): $800-$2000. Nice scam going boys, but I hope others who can figure out the right end of a screwdriver do what I did and do a little research on how to do it yourself.

What I learned: a little patience and research (a lot of research actually) you can most likely recover you data from a dead drive.

What I also learned: never take the alarmist advice of ?experts?, especially when they are in the position to profit (a HUUUUGE profit) off your fears and panic.


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buy silver surfer

[zflynn]

Forgot to mention what killed my drive, a dying power supply that was creating havoc for a couple of days, spiking, etc. Power supply's are important, keep an eye on them!
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Mazda 717C

[hdd]

In your case you are lucky. Indeed clicking/knocking can be caused by a malfunctioning PCB, however in 90% of cases it will be a dead pre-amp or cracked heads.

You should not belittle the "Pro's" as you call them because some do a very good job and try as hard as they can to recover customers data.

I would always suggest that you should swap the drive electronics first.

The Seagate 7200.7/8 drives are a classic example of a typical head failure, however after PCB swap the drive works well.