Crashed Harddrives

[bluetailfly3]

I have 2 Western Digital Harddrives (1 is a 40 gig and the other is a 18gig) that I would like to recover the some of the information off of them.I tried setting each one to slave and tried booting my comp with each one connected as slave to see if I could get into the harddrives.The first one made some funny noises and my computer didn't even recognize it after my comp booted up.The second one wouldn't let me even boot my computer up.I had it set to slave but my comp kept reverting back to the Windows Safe mode select screen.My comp never booted up. Does anyone know of a way that I can get the information off of these harddrives? I don't wanna send them off or ton of money to recover this data.I am just wondering if there is a way I can do it.Here are my current computer specs if this helps anyone.

Intel P4 3.0 GHz
1.0 gig of ram
120 gig WD SATA Harddrive
WinXP Pro w/SP1 and all other updates

Thanks in advance.

[rastagard]

If the drive mechanism is damaged and not functioning, the only way I know of to extract the data is to send them off. The disks must be removed and mounted to a drive. This is not a do-it-yourself project as far as I know.

Sorry, bud. It may be a lost cause.............

[gbread49]

OK, this might sound silly, but it has been known to work on drives that are dying or just about to die.

Take the drive, and put it in the freezer for a couple of hours....don't laugh! *L* Then reinstall it while it is still cold.

Hey, if it works, you got your data back. If not, nothing lost.

(Courtesy of a tip I remember being posted by MO a long time ago. It worked for him.... :) )

[Lion7718]

I tried that on mine...didn't work..but it is worth a try.
I wish I had burned the data when it was acting up..instaed I rebooted....lost it all.

[bluetailfly3]

I had read the freezer trick on a couple of different sites, but was debating on whether or not I thought it really worked.I may give it a go because as you said, "What do I have to lose".

BTW...it's great to see you back hanging around the site Gbread.

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

Source: SearchWinSystems.com (http://searchwinsystems.techtarget.com)
By Brien M. Posey
03 Mar 2005

It's been said that there are two types of hard drives: those that have failed and those that will. Sadly, this statement is absolutely true. Because hard drives contain lots of moving parts, they are more prone to wear and tear than just about any other part in your computer.

So, what do you do when a hard drive fails? If the drive is a part of a mirror set, a stripe set with parity or a mirrored stripe set, then you would simply replace the drive, and the lost data automatically regenerates onto the new drive.

But what if the failed drive is just an ordinary IDE interface that does not participate in a fault-tolerant set?


Read entire story here (http://searchwinsystems.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1063916,00.html?track=NL-297&ad=505892) .