My Old HDD

[lakk]

So randomly, I turn on my computer a couple days ago and I get a message from my computer saying that it's failing to boot and I need to insert the boot media. Naturally, I was like oh okay. So I insert the boot media only to realize I don't have any recent or ANY backups at all since I just cleaned them all out to make room for more. So I couldn't do a system repair and my only real other option was a reformat, which is something I don't want to do since I have a majority of my pictures and all my songs and just overall important stuff (Like my photoshop work and Flipcam videos). I ended up getting a new HDD which is fine I was able to clean install Win7 Ultimate (my copy) onto this no problem.

So, I'm trying to get the shit from my old drive onto my newer one and I have everything hooked up right, power cables, sata cables. I still can't detect the old drive and Disk Management still doesn't see it. Any ideas? I want to see what you guys think before I look up anything myself cause I'm making brownies right now and I'm probably going to try a enclosure kit cause that seemed to work great for my old IDE HDD cause I basically just threw it in and I was able to go through my shit no problem.

Throw it at me! Random ass error, I assumed it was just a boot error with the OS so the drive itself should be intact, I know it fires up and spins. I just need to ACCESS the information, I don't care too much about the drive itself. This thing is like... 3 years old.

[MrFixit]

enclosure kit probably will not work, but i have been known to be wrong once or twice.

you can try putting it in a ziplock baggie, then sticking it in the freezer for about an hour or so.
once you take it out hook it up quickly and try to get data off. this works about 50% of the time.
it may only work for a few minutes so copy quickly.
you can also try a linux boot disk like miniPE. sometimes linux can see a hard drive that windows cannot.

[Cujo]

there's not much any normal person can do at this point based on your description. an enclosure should not work but i've seen unreadable drives suddenly work one time when powered up so it's not impossible. this is a situation where i'd recommend sending to a data recovery place. i know a place up here in guelph that's very good. it does get VERY pricey though. i believe it was $1400 for one of my clients and that was for about 400GB of data.

[litho]

well you can try a few other things too, like try different sata cable and sata port. I had something similar happen to me and it turned out to be shitty sata cable. Also make sure to change the pin settings on the HDD from master to slave, sometimes the bios is fussy like that. Speaking of Bios are you able to see what the current settings are? Does it even detect your previous HDD? If the drive is totally screwed and the data on it is something you really want recovered then going the expensive data recov route is probably your best option. Also google is your friend, I'm sure you'll figure it out good luck man.

[KingGeo]

not that i would recommend doing this. but i once was able to recover a laptop drive for a client after the motor had seized.
i figured it was junk and the client had already said pro data was not worth the cost (as cujo said, it can be $1400+) so i opened it up for fun as we always did with dead HDD's. plugged it in to watch the spin and when it didnt i forced the motor while powered on. it freed up the seized barrings and was spinning great after that.
i was able to recover all the data for the customer and the drive continued to work for a few weeks after.
the reason i would NEVER say to really try this unless its a last resort is the damage that can be caused by dust etc by opening the drive. unless you have a clean room in your house...

the freezer trick has never worked for me but other times just 'boosting' the drive (power on/off very rapidly a few times) has worked.
also if the is a board failure and not a motor failure i have swapped the PCB from a working drive of the same model and had that work, very rare however.

many data recover places will offer a free estimate so that is always worth it.

[Pandamonium]

lol wow whats wrong with you guys this is a fellow WTF'er. dude nobody else want's to step up. send that bitch too me and i'll get your data off.

[iTryHard]

lol wow whats wrong with you guys this is a fellow WTF'er. dude nobody else want's to step up. send that bitch too me and i'll get your data off.

Panda just wants to see Lakk porn

[jonny b]

Make sure you have the Jumpers set so the new drive is Master and the old drive is set to Slave. Yes, I am serious. master and slave.

[jonny b]

...i'll get your data off.
I LOVE it when you talk nerdy.

[rouns]

just boot off a linux live cd and then see if you can mount your disk and pull your files off it

[iTryHard]

ughh i have not had to do that in a while

I still have a little canister laying around here somewhere with a lot of those jumper connectors.