Wayfarers of Veeshan

I could use some help from anyone with tech knowledge on this...

My computer is back up and running, and seems to be ok. I am still needing
to extract my Shaman epic files from the "dead" hard drive. It's a SATA, and
my motherboard has 4 SATA slots. The first (0) is taken up by the new hard
drive. The 2nd and 3rd (1 and 2) are my 2 DVD drives. The 4th (3) is empty.

I tried unplugging one of my DVD drives (which normally is the E: drive) from
SATA slot 1 (both power and SATA cord) and attaching that power and
SATA cord to my "dead" hard drive. I then
started up the computer. While the power was definitely
spinning that "dead" disk, when I went to "explore" (using "My Computer") I found
that I couldn't see the "dead" drive. It should've shown up as "E:" when
exploring. I shut down, re-attached the DVD drive, fired back up and
definitely had the "E:" show up as that DVD drive.

So my question is : Is the drive truly dead, or did I need to do something
more for my computer to "see" the "dead" drive as an E: drive?

Drex

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

On first blush it 'sounds' like it's dead.

I would check and see if the drive shows up when you go into BIOS (usually F2 or Delete when the computer is starting up).
If it's visible, then at least the ROM on the drive is still okay, but that doesn't mean anything about the data.

If it's visible in BIOS, you'll want to go ahead and boot into Windows so we can look to see if it's recognized there.

Click on Start - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management
Look under Storage for Disk Management
Click on it once and you should be able to see the 'raw' information about your drives.
Check for 'unallocated space' the size of your drive. Post a pic or email me if you need add. assistance.

More to follow once we can get that far.

If it is really dead and you "must" have some data that's stored on it there may be options. I believe there are some companies out there that can take the drive apart to salvage data but I don't think it's cheap. Of course for the files you mentioned this is probably a bit above and beyond the call of duty. Now if it were to save the gnomish battle plans to invade freeport you might consider it.

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If nothing seems to be going your way, choose another direction.

If you are technically inclined, you can try finding another drive, same model, size, everything exact, and try swapping the board from one drive to the other. I have not done it, but I have heard of it being done.

That would be highly unlikely to resolve an issue with data and almost certainly result in two dead drives. Clean rooms are necessary to work on drives appropriately.

for your harddrive the best thing to do is go spend 20bucks on a usb to sata harddrive cable u can plug it to the back of your computer it will let u see the hard drive and get your files out i did it to one of my computers and it worked like a charm

Two things here, First if the drive is not recognized by windows there could a multitue of reasons why. First thing to do is check to see if your bios recoognizes the drive. If it is not recognized in the bios, some times you can manually set the drive up and it will work. Usually though the bios will cause the drive seem to have some wacky partition if set up manually. If you can not do this then you definately are not getting any form of data stream from the drive and it is officially dead. If your bios does auto recognize the drive, then you need to look at windows as the source of the problem. I would do a web search for several different types of programs that can allow you to set your drive from inside windows. Norton Ghost used to be real good for that, but I don't think that they make it anymore. Used to be able to clone a dead drive with norton Ghost too.

And Tanliel techinically you are correct, you need a clean room to open a hard drive. Some less expensive hard drives have ribbon cables and sockets set underneath the actual board attached to the drive. This allows them to be changed without opening the hard drive. It all depends on the drive manufacturer. Swapping boards on a drive usually does not involve actually opening the hard drive casing. To change a motor, platters, or a read head, yeah you would need to do this, but not to swap the board. Often taking the board from a good drive and placing it on a bad one can solve the issues of data corruption or possible damaged hardware on the board. If the drive actually spins up, but you can't get data from it, then usually the transfer mechanism is damaged and can be replaced. It is still delicate work, but can be done. It drive does not spin up and you don't hear the read heads shifting, you can pretty much throw it away unless you plan to spend 1000 to 4000 dollars to send it to a clean room for data recovery.

Here's my plan of action for this week:

1) Re-attach "dead" drive and check the BIOS upon reboot to see if drive is seen. If so, I go to step 2a:

2a) Possible problem that the drive thinks it is "C:" and therefore is in conflict with (and won't be seen by)
the usual "My Computer" explore button, since my new good boot hard drive is the C: drive now. As such,
I'm told that going to My computer / rightclick / Manage / Storage-Disk Management / rightclick
that I'm able to see any drive plugged in, even if there's a "letter incompatability". I should be able
to re-assign the "dead" drive something besides "C:" and see it when I explore. (This advice from
both Tanliel as well as my work sys admin guys...exact same plan of attack)

2b) If the BIOS doesn't see it then I'll look into a SATA-to-USB connection...I see that such cables
exist, but what I'm unclear of is how I will power the drive?

Drex

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

2a) If the bios sees the drive then in the bios set the boot priority to use your new drive as the first boot device. windows should automagically assign a drive letter to the "dead" drive when it boots up.

2b) if the usb cable is long enough to reach around the back then you can just power it from one of the normal power plugs in the case. if you have a limited number of sata power plugs then you can just borrow the one from your cd/dvd drive.

Okay folks, this is a Hardware forum, but there are a couple things to remember:

1) There is a very FINE line with regard to posting TOO MUCH information.
Most of the discussion about swapping boards and stuff? Too much info. and not relevant to getting the problem resolved.

2) Know your audience. I've known Drexx a long time and have an idea of his savvy level. There's some technical in there, but only just as much as I think he needs/understands.
For someone I did not know, there would be much more 1,2,3 step by step and absolutely nothing that jumped too far too fast.


Try to be as simple as possible. Most folks reading this stuff are not in the computer industry.

Well, the BIOS doesn't see the drive, so that takes the wind out of my sails a bit.

I've got a sysadmin at work who offered to do what he can, but at this point
I'm losing hope.

Drex

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

Blargh

I did the freezing thing successfully a long time ago with a diskette. YMMV.

Well, my sys admin guy took the drive for a few days and tried everything he could to read it, to no avail. That closes
the book on this sad chapter in my "who needs backups?" life. Whether I decide to completely start my epic over and
re-create the Shammy guide remains to be seen.

So I'm gonna start a new thread, asking my next big question....

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress