www.deadharddrive.com

[hellopeople]

My story:

I had a drive stop working. My PC was on, I'd just booted up, Windows asked to install its genuine verification thing, I accidently clicked cancel, turned my back and heard a blip or fzz and the PC went dead.

In many subsequent boot ups my PC went to the:

"We apologise for any inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change may have caused this....."

I had 4 boot up options available:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with networking
Safe Mode with command prompt

Last known good configuration

and

Start Windows normally.

None of them worked and I was constantly led back to that screen. I COULD hit DEL and get into BIOS...but no drives were recognised.

Anyhoo, after a while mny PC stopped even turning on. I tried slaving the drive up to another PC but it would not power on

Anyway...I DID have an identical HD at my disposal, so I tried the technique of switching the circuit boards. And I tried my problematic HD as a slave. This DID NOT work for me. All I got was nothing at all on the monitor. Initially it did power up and it went through the preliminary cycles of a normal booting PC (but never to the Windows symbol). But like I said...just a blank screen...like the monitor wasn't even on.

So, to finish my story, I had such a hellish time with this that I decided to cut my losses and not risk my PC (which I did a reinstall with on my old slave drive which is now my main drive). I just got the feeling that I didn't want that dodgy HD near anything, so I unplugged it and put it in the cupboard.

There's some stuff on there I would really like to get back...but as I said, it's just too hellish to continue the fight. It's really strength sapping stuff.

I've never had a HD fail like that before. It just came out of the clear blue sky. I can only hope that my new drive performs better. It's a Barracuda as well.

Also, I will be a bit more dilligent about backing up important files these days. My mode of operation will be to save such files on DVD's and then store those DVD's in the cupboard. I feel this will be fine.

One day I hope to get some inspiration and get that drive going again. I still have the other circuit board...but it's summer here right now, I have no aircon and it's a bitch to stuff around with PCs and fiddly crap in these conditions.

I'm going to aircon in the future too. I think it's better for PC's.


Anyway, that's my story

[hddstudio]

If you do have an "identical PCB board", why don't you try "HOT SWAP" procedure ? It's about guaranteed 99% works in your case...