Yeah well I'm screwed

[Avatar]

Huh...  didn't notice that it was backwards...   

Yoda he is, knowing it not.  Now, matters are worse...

-Av-

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

If you do decide to open the case on the drive try relubricating the bearing again with one of those silicone syringe type needle applicators; most automotive outlets carry them I believe.

Then try go to like CompUSA and purchasing a removable IDE drive case; there made up up 2 separate components; the case and the removable tray where the drive is installed. I have one that I bought for like 20 bucks and installed easily as drive F on my system. After reassembling the case move the jumper connector to SLAVE and install the thing. You may need to to buy another IDE cable with an extra connector for the installation of the removable drive to get recognized by the OS.

Then try powering it up a few times to disperse the lubricant before trying to actually using it to transfer any data. If the abnormal sounds you reported earlier stop then try rebooting the system again and copy whatever you want to recover to another drive and then put the old drive away in case you need to do anything with it in the future...good luck we all have our fingers crossed that something good results from your sad dilemma. BNG

[bigbadbogie]

i dont believe that 2 seperate drives can go bung at the same time --

i reckon foul play is somehow involved -- what was that ,, cough.""..ravens brother..""...cough -- oh excuse me   

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Actually, most peeps have multiple drives on the same IDE cables; 1 configured as Master and sequent drive(s) jumpered as Slaves. You've never heard of that BBB? The idea is to get the drive operational long enough to salvage the data; it can be done if the bearing are still intact. Although, there are other electronic components inside too. I've heard that a big source of failures (with electronics) are related to leaking capacitors which hold a tiny current that's critical to the normal operation of the device itself. Might be worth a try considering how much time the guy put into the work he did on his mod.

[bigbadbogie]

yeh ive heard of that - only every time the computer starts up coz it says it on the loading screen thingy

and raven, just take it to wherever you bought it and get the tech jeeks to fix it

[Angstromicus]

Well, solid state drives are hitting the market. May cost about $25 a gigabyte (as opposed to 25¢ / gig to HDD's), but the performance is similar, some things run faster, more reliable (most SSD's can be read infinitely many times, and support 300,000 - 1,000,000 write cycles to each memory block).

[Nielk1]

You could also buy a ton of thumb drives, remove all the chips, and wire them all into a custom RAID array. Finaly write your own dirvers and install it like a hard drive (since it is so small it should fit in the HD slot).

Anyone want to do that, I would love too but I don't know how.
You would get RAID style redundancy and your stuff would be relativly safe. If 1 thumbdrive failes, you pop it open, switch out the cell, recoppy from one of the redundants and your done.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Back to the data recovery topic though popping off the cover to look at the platter surfaces might not be a bad idea. I remember doing this with an HD that came out of a TIVO unit and boy was it a mess; one of the reader devices actually craved out a circular track on one of the several platters making up the drive. The data on that section was toasted, but the other platters were still intact. You may want to research the web before doing anything to the drive to see what other options are available. I was thinking that if you can access another PC via LAN network cable, etc; then you should be able to transfer your data files to recover what you can from one PC to the other as well...BNG

[bigbadbogie]

any word raven???

[Raven]

Right tried that data recovery, won't even recognize the HDs, Frozen=nope, tried pretty much everything that has been said that I can actually do with no result. Opened up and masses of scratches all over both of them, not in circles either, actual zig-zagging lines, aaand obviously due to the previous, smacking them didn't work...
How, I don't know, thinking about it, surely the only thing that could do that is a huge impact whilst the arms are moving? Or could a power surge do that? So me thinking I'm screwed?

[OvermindDL1]

Well, to look on the bright side of things, you will have a whole new outlook on backing things up.

[Red Devil]

I've backed up all FE13, plus the DLL stuff to one DVD now instead of a few CD's.  Takes about 13 minutes at 4x.

[Zero Angel]

Thumbdrives! They're cheap these days.

Also, Windows Briefcase was a feature that I found useful back when I used Windows 98/2000 a lot. I often used it to synch local files to a floppy disk for transfer to/from work -- if I modified the files on the floppy while I was at home, my version at my work PC would be updated -- with Briefcase, the file with the later timestamp would be copied to both mediums.

I havent really used briefcase in XP, and not sure if it would be useful for synching entire folders to thumbdrive, but I did find some documentation here

[Red Devil]

Good point. 

[Lizard]

I nearly lost Fleshstorm to a similar thing, there were a few files I never did recover so I can understand your pain I now back things up religiously in triplicate, it's really really important these days as harddrives appear to be becoming less and less reliable .


a cheapo Liteon DVD burner is only about £20 it's a small price to pay for peace of mind.