damaged hard drive

[Robbo]

anybody got any tips for getting a damaged hard drive working just enough to get a few pictures from it?

[Bigfoot]

What kind of damage is done to it?

If you can get it plugged into another computer so that it picks it up, you can download a programme called Hirens CD, on there there is a HDD recover programme which can read each sector of a harddrive and rebuild it so you can access the files to then recover them, it wont recover the HDD enough so you can re-use it again though.

[Robbo]

i will give that a go pal, basically i pulled the hard drive out of a dvd recorder and fitted it to pc as a bit of extra storage a while back worked fine for a couple of years but its given up on me. i can hear a noise as if its trying start up bit like a clicking every couple of seconds

[Bigfoot]

Ahh, that noise is normally is not good, it means that the needle which does the reading is not functioning right

[andybond]

Click of death.

Robbo, give it a short sharp shock. I drop the drives from around 4 feet , plug it in and hope ..

[Trevhib]

If the needle is knackered but isn't scratching the surface of the drive then all the information on it will be intact and in theory, recoverable. I think.

[andybond]

If the needle is knackered but isn't scratching the surface of the drive then all the information on it will be intact and in theory, recoverable. I think.

Correct. But its expensive.
The platters hold the data, but if the needle/pickup motor is bust ( the clicking ) then you need to find an identical drive , a dust free environment and swap them out ..

[Coops]

if your lucky (and if you've not got the balls I wouldn't recommend this) but you can remove the top cover from the drive and free the 'needle' off and the drive should then be readable again.

I've done this multiple times and I reckon its about 50% success rate

[Matt Cole]

You trying to save them old doggin pics Robbo?:laugh:

[Trevhib]

How did this thread get resurrected? Lol. The OP is not even a member any longer.