Help to cheer my missus up

[imadoofus]

Wotcha.

On reflection, that's not a good title for this thread...

My PC got fried at 4:30 this morning, by a power spike. Yes, I had a protector, and no it didn't blummen work! PC was ok, but my hard drive is dead.

Upshot is, we bought a new pc today. It's pretty cool, with a 3.4Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM among other things, so it's better than the one we had before. Set up went beautifully, and I didn't have to change any settings on our 2 laptops; they were automatically networked without me doing anything

Anyway; SWMBO has lost her screensaver (as have I, but I can live with that). I'm sure it was a Microsoft one, but I'm jiggered if I know where I got it. Hers was a sort of firework display thing, and mine was some blobs walking down a moving staircase. I can be more descriptive if necessary, but to be honest, I feel a bit of a wally asking about this at all.

Does anyone have any idea where I can find these (they will both have come together in a package with various others). It would make our house a smiley place again.


Also, is it possible to retrieve data off a probably dead hard drive? I've installed it as a slave into two different PCs, and when they boot, it makes a noise like a 3.5" floppy that's corrupt; a sort of 'graunching'. If I install it as a master, the pc won' t find it at all, and asks for a system disk. The HDD has some digital photies of a recent holiday, and Mrs hasn't seen them. I know data retrieval is possible at a high price, but maybe there's something else I can try that somebody here knows about.

AND I'VE JUST REALISED I'VE LOST THE PICTURES OF MY NEW MERCEDES, AND I HAVEN'T POSTED THEM ON THIS FORUM YET

Thanks for your help

PJ

 

[Ian B Walker]

I once had a similar problem. I was advised to turn it on its side out of the case while booting up and tap it with a hammer. It worked enough for me to retrive my lost data. The drive now is consigned to the awaiting throwing out bin

 

[frog1520]

What make is the hard drive thats broke? Do you hear it spin up when power is applied?

 

[guydewdney]

do a search under me and HDD - im sure I posted up a link to HDD-regen - a program that runs in dos to re-instate dead sectors on a HDD.. Its the only one i have found that works.

made by some eastern european sounding bloke.... shareware and simple to use.

 

[imadoofus]

It's a Seagate ATAII, and I've bashed it with everything I've got (except the aforementioned missus). Yes, Frog it kind of spins, but as I said you can hear it not being read. If that makes any sense.

I'll have a search for your thread Guy, 'cos it sounds like that's what I need.

Ian, I'm with you on the 'awaiting throwing out', but for some reason, I don't have the heart, and this isn't the first time this has happened. I now have four (FOUR ) HDD's that are dead, but used to contain my life at various stages and I just can't face parting with them even though they are useless.

New thread perhaps? 101 uses for a dead HDD...

PJ

 

[frog1520]

If you do throw it out mate, please make sure you put the sledge hammer through it first. Just to make sure noone else can read it either!! All these fancy magnetic erasers aren't enough - flatten it!

PC's these days contain all kinds of personal data which you wouldnt want to fall into the wrong hands!

By the way, the reason I asked about make - was wondering if it was a WD! Those things are weird with the jumpers - when you try to make a drive the slave, you have to mess with the jumpers on the existing master too! (eek!)

Good luck!

 

[WLeg]

If it's Realy Important to you (or for the quiet) try Datasavers. They've managed to recover data for me in the past, and are cheap...

 

[Flyer]

Wrap it in a plastic bag (like a sandwich bag), seal it and place it in your freezer for an hour or so. Then immediately connect it to your PC, as a slave, and reboot. There is sometimes enough time to get the data off before the drive fails completely.

It does sound like a mechanical failure, so may not be effective, but most certainly worth a try

 

[guydewdney]

ah - here it is (15 pages of seraches to find it)

http://mbclub.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=11619

and heres the direct link

www.dewdney.co.uk/guy/hddreg_v1.32.exe


Guy

it runs VERY slowly, and from a dos box.

run - save to floppy, re-boot (with only dead HDD in) - it chunters and finds / repairs dead sectors. when it repairs a dead sector, it stops (shreware cripple). restart program (and tell it to skip x sectors that its already done)

it is VERY slow - it takes about 2 days to do a 60Gb HDD...

 

[imadoofus]

You're a star Guy. Thanks for your help. I'm abroad for the rest of the month, but I'll try and tackle it when I get back.

Have some more Rep.

PJ

 

[toolman1954]

Dead Hard Drives

Guydewdney
I too have few dead ones laying about,all with something I wanted off of them
--- why do we never back up drives ????. Anyway, I took the liberty of downloading a copy of that prog off of your site, I do hope that was o.k.
Steve