Another HDD Problem

Read with interest the thread re Windows HDD Problem and think I may have my answer but thought I'd troll a little bit.

Maxtor Diamond Max+8 40 GB drive has been operating in My son's Dell Dimension since 2003 but not heavily used. Got a fatal error on boot and would not boot into windows.

I reset all connectors and memory sticks and got the same thing. Removed it and installed as slave in my home built computer which has also been working for about 3 years. The drive is identified correctly in BIOS and in the Device Manager where is is said to be working properly.

When I try to look at it from Windows the drive letter does not show up at all. I even went to Cmd and typed in what the drive should have been and again it wasn't there.

I have never used Maxtor in my computers, normally WD but do have one IBM HDD from my old Dell which I still use ocassionally. I went to their site and found maxblaster but the description talks only about formating drives and nothing indicated about testing them. I think that the drive has gone over the hill but am I missing something?

Important pictures of our 3 great grandkids from birth, 8 mos., 2 1/2 years and 5 years old, were on the drive and of course not backed up. Is there any way I can get into the drive and retrieve and backup those pictures?

I have also requested a quote from a data retrieval company but if they can do it why can't we?

Any and all help would be appreciated.

 

Data retrieval companies charge a bomb but do get the job down well - they work in sealed rooms where electrons can't escape etc - I can't remember the exact wording that I was given!

When you hooked it up as slave, did you go to Disk Management and see if it was located in there?

(Control Panel > Admin Tools > Disk Management in case you were wondering how to get there!)
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Yes, agree.....as i always say, It's a question of priority, how much is the data worth to you?

To me, that sort of data is priceless!

I think what Mcadam is refering to is whats termed in the industry as 'clean rooms'.
Clean rooms are used in many industries where environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, airborne contaminates and even light, can be detrimental to processes and procedures for manufacturing and repair of sensitive electronic components.
These rooms are a necessary facility in the data recovery industry because of the close tolerance mechanisms found inside the latest hard disk cavity.


My advice, take it to the experts!


Regards...

 

Thanks for the input.

I did look at the drive in Disk Mgt. and it shows it however still unable to get to it from windows. It shows it as Disk 1 (slave) with a 31 MB FAT partition, Healthy (EISA configuration), a 38.2 GB NTSF Partition, Healthy ( Active). This was at the bottom of the dialog box. Up at the top of the box the 2 partitions were unlabled in the line for the volumn. Below that the master drive had drive letters for each of my partitions, i.e. C:; Data D: etc.

When I looked at it in the Device Manager it was said to be operating correctly but I still cannot get access to it in my computer or the original computer.

Is there anyway to get the computer to assign the drive letter again? Is this an idcation that the boot record has been damaged or corrupted? Can't access from DOS/CMD line either. Therefore no way to get to the System Restore that should be on the disk.

This is the original drive from DELL which may explain the 2 partitions formatted differently.

I did contact an on-line data retrival company and got a call back the next day. WOW! $300 to $400 if they can do it easily with their sw and $700-$900 if they have to disassemble. Yes, Clean Room is the correct description. Used to have those for the spacecraft I used to work on.


I guess there will be backups on the replacement HDD if I can't get into the data someway other than spending $300-$400.

Thanks again for your inputs and if you can think of anything else please let me know.

 

Why not try downloading the trial version of GetDataBack NTFS and slave the drive in your PC again. It won't let you recover the data but it will try and read the drive and give you a list of files that are possibly recoverable. It is a read only program so it shouldn't damage the drive.

It sounds to me that the small FAT partition holds your partition information and is damaged. I know that the problem is fixable but I don't know how to do it. Assuming that I'm right I believe GetDataBAck will be able to read the undamaged NTFS partition and build a list of files. Consider giving it a try.