Maxtor One Touch 20gb possible repair?

Here's the situation. Maxtor one touch external was sitting on an empty bottled water box in a huge tent where about 50 or so of us were living. I was gone at the time. Some idiot threw a water bottle (not sure how much water was actually in it but obviously enough to provide enough force to knock it over.) across the tent at someone and it knocked my hdd off the box and onto the floor. the box was approx 1.5 ft high. Plugged drive into my computer and got nothing. It spun up but then started making this really high pitched (high for a hdd) alternating screetching sound. once i unplugged it just back to spinning but spinning much faster than normal. Someone i work with has a Greystone Data Systems D101 kit so i tried that. It didn't even recognize the drive. I've been looking online for repair/recovery services but i didn't see anything less than $1k and i'm really not about to pay that much money to replace a drive that only cost me 189 to begin with (around may 05 or so)

 

Well... There is an old wise tale that says that you can place a defective hard drive in a freezer for 30 minutes (I think) or less. And then connected your drive to your system to extract your data.
Whether or not this works for you you only get one shot with this method. This does not permanently repair the drive. It just gets you some time to get the data off. Always worth a try.. Have nothing to lose if you tried everything else.

Good luck..

 

lol, at this point i'm willing to try anything. however i dont' have access to a freezer. i am curious to know how this works though. i mean wouldn't there be considerable condensation inside the drive once it began to thaw? I"m in iraq so i know it will probably thaw pretty fast. and the 200gb drive (made a typo in the thread topic) is almost full so i think i would probably be outside of the window for this to work. i was looking, more so, for a company with an internet site i could go to that does hdd repairs.

 

*bump* anybody know of any online hard drive repair companies?

 

Its only a long shot but the drive must be placed in a water proof plastic bag and left in the freezer for 2-3 hours.....

Metal contracts as it cools so this reduces the clearances for the 'read, write' heads on the drive and it may be possible to spin them up if they are not to badly damaged....pull it from the freezer, hook it up, and if it boots, go like a shot dog and haul your data of it (have everything set before hand to achieve this). You may have 20 to 30 min before she heats up again!

Bear in mind if this method fails, your data is most likely lost forever and the guy that threw the water bottle should take your watch for the remainder of your tour!

From an Aussie rescue perspective.....http://www.payam.com.au/index.html?wcw=google&gclid=CPyW_OiEwYgCFRN8TAod0WAiGQ
It can be expensive though

Good Luck....

 

well mr toeknee already mentioned that earlier. i don't want a one shot POSSIBLE, lol. i want an at least 80% guaranteed solution. besides, i don't have access to a freezer. well i would have punished the asshole who did it but i have no idea who it was cuz i wasn't around and the idiot (one of my soldiers who the bottle was thrown at for beign a sloth) was too groggy to remember how the events happened. all he remembers is gettin up and pickin up the stuff (he was sleep at the time).

yes i know it can be expensive. i've already went to 2 possible sites (out of about 10 or so that i found on google) and they both wanted about a 1k for instensive cleanroom work involving physical repair. and i already know that's wut it's gonna take.

 

Remember that there is never any guarantee of recovering your data after hard drive 'mechanical' failure.
I was simply stating the necessaries required for the method suggested by toeknee.

I guess it comes down to a cost weigh up of how much you want that data!

Regards....

 

yep....and it's gonna cost me at least 1200

 

Schweinfurt? Are you at the American base there?

Sorry the guys let you down. Was any of the data backed up? If there is evidence of a sensitive nature on it, I'm sure you could have the data recovered for free.

abri

 

i'm at AN american base there, lol. well it was mostly ripped dvds (all of which are still back in the rear because that was one of the reason's i had the hdd) fortunately the programs i had on it i either had on dvd or my computer. so basically it was a few dvds that i lost. and some porn. it was just a personal one....not government.