Failed Hard Disk
 

I have a fairly old Maxtor 6gb hard disk, which was on my Sisters pc, its making a dodgy clicking noise and wont boot and i cant jump it off another pc, im not fussed about having it all singing dancing again, i just need to get a lot of pictures of her children from it.

I dont think PC World are up for the task, anyone know where i could get this done, or at tleast the photos from it.

Any websites that people have good experiences from ? UK preferably.

TIA :)

If you can't slave it from another PC then its dodgy.

There are companies that specalise in this, but you will have to crack open the piggy bank as they are not cheap :eek:

Darren

:thumb:

i'll let her know the bad news :(

When one of my colleagues had this done it cost £750 - no, it really is NOT cheap.


M

One cheap option is to find an identical, and it has to be totally identical harddisk and swap the board on the bottom. I've done this in the past with mixed results, sometimes it works, sometimes is doesn't.

Darren

Yeh as darlodge says, I've done this in the past to when the data on the drive was just too important to lose. I replaced the PCB on my duff drive from a friends drive which was identical and it worked! I then actually bought a new drive to use its PCB, the original drive is still going strong as we speak :) However it is a right PITA to change the PCB over. It really is a last resort thing but alot cheaper than gettin a specialist to do it ;)

I'm still trying to find a replacment harddisk for teh board.

The drive is a IBM DeathStar 61GB!! They are $250 in America :eek:

Darren

heh oh dear thats a rare drive :) Why is it so pricey, is it SCSI ?

deathstar.... say no more :(

Burr, never again will I buy an IBM drive, everone I've owned has failed just outside the warratny, I really should have known better when I got my last one :rolleyes:

Its a standard IDE driver, they are avaiable on ebay, but only in Germany and the US for some reason. And they are expensive :(

Darren

i'll take a look when i get back to work. might have a controller knocking about

Cheers Burr,

I only need it for a short time :) If it helps, the model number is IC35L060AVVA07-0.

Darren

Ipski - have you tried maxtor's diagnostic software (download it from their website) - thats pretty much all you can do, somtimes it does kill the file structure though, so you still lose the files :(

I have 3 deathstars 2 dead, one still chugs along as a slave (40gig though - otherwise I'd happily sell it to darlodge ;) ), but makes some rather odd rattling noise and has span up and down for no reason on a few occasions (not powersaving) !

Did have a IBM Travelstar drive die on me too, but managed to get it running again using IBM's disc doctor software. :)

I guess now she knows the merits of backing up though......

Not difficult when many of their drives now have a three month warranty! Mine lasted five months. As you say, never again...


M

cheers Ali, probably not worth doing though really, the file structure and pics we dont want to lose.

Milamber, where have you been with that sooo useful piece of information. :p ever thought about writing a book on 'Hindsight and how to be smug' :p :)

:) i can get my hands on a few PCB's, old company's job lot of hardware. :thumb:

Plenty of times...... :thumb:

To be honest "Hindsight - Volume 1" would have been after my first hard drive crashed containing all my baby pictures too (isn't it always the way?)

I think I'm on the 3rd printing of "Hindsight - Volume 4 (Motherboards and thunder storms)"

"Hindsight - Volume 2" deals with the tricky topic of turning off the pc before installing ram....

:D PMSL

:thumb:

Don't forget part 2: "This also applies to video cards".


M

Buy no and receive Darren's book of PC mishaps free.

Topic's include, stories such as

Dropping your PDA from your top pocket whilst bending over a server and smashing the ram
Accidently formating a server and workstation with a bootable CD
Plugging in an under voltage power supply and blowing up a motherboard

And many other exicting stories

Darren