hard drive keeled over - help

[awrighty]

(this was also posted in data recovery. hey, I'm desperate)

I have a Western Digital 40GB drive that up and stopped a few days ago. No loud crash noises, just stopped.

The BIOS still detects the drive id correctly as a WD400EB drive, however, it only says it has 8GB capacity. I changed the BIOS setting from 'auto' to 'manual', but the settings were already correct, and tinkering did nothing to change the capacity listed.

The drive doesn't vibrate, hum, or make any noise. As such, the PC doesn't recognize it (other than to say 'primary master - IDE HARD DRIVE' on bootup and the BIOS menu details above). I've tried new cable, updating BIOS, checking CMOS, power supplies and all that before I realized the drive wasn't spinning. Because the PC (and a friend's so it's not just mine) sees the drive in BIOS, I figured I had a shot.

I have tried some software that is supposed to help, but nothing, windows, ERD boot disks, nothing sees the 40GB drive.

I have an 12GB drive on there now as the master, but would really like to get latest data off my 40gb drive before probably chucking it in the trash.

Any suggestions on getting to spin w/o going to expensive labs? HELP!!!?

I have a 3 month old backup, but would love to save my hind-end on this..... thx.

 

[edfair]

Holding the drive with the fingers of one hand in the horizontal plane spin it as hard as you can aroung to slam into the palm of your your other hand. Then immediately power it up. Best if you can do this with cables attahed.
Will sometimes break the motor and platters free from dead spots.
If this doesn't work in the first 3 times, it probably indicates that the motor or drivers are bad.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Comtech]

Stick it in a ziploc baggie, and put it in the freezer for a couple of hours.
Take it out, and immediately hook it up and start the computer.
Sometimes it will run just long enough to get data off of.
I've used this trick for over 5 years, and it works about 50% of the time, when all other methods have failed.

Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/