www.deadharddrive.com

[broadband155]

Hi There,

I was amazed to find a site dedicated this this subject. Great though for people in need.

I use my PC as a server for video. This evening I saw the dreaded blue screen of death on it but at the same time, video was still streaming to the set top box. I rebooted the computer to get rid of the bsod and of course streaming stopped. It blue screened again and I tried a second time. I then noticed the bios reporting that it couldn't find the drive. I tried rebooting a few more times and once it reported the drive as present but didn't boot into windows and never again.

I had a look and the drive was quite warm to the touch. It has been working fine for about two years, so I don't think that was the issue but not sure.

It spins up just fine and no bad noises or other obvious problems. I have a 500GB sata drive also connected to the PC in an external eSATA case which is working fine, so I took it out of its case and put in the 400GB drive. That way, I can hear and see it clearly. It didn't help at all, which troubleshoots cables and any other physical connection issue.

I tried a few recovery tools but none of them find the drive either. I guess they wouldn't if the bios can't.

I allowed it to cool down completely before trying it again, but still nothing.

Any advice would be very welcome as I have lots of video on there that isn't backed up. Not the end of the world but more than a little annoying all the same.

It is also the drive that windows is on and I am not looking forward to doing everything from scratch again. Recovering data from it would make things a lot easier.

Thanks.