Need to Access dead Western Digital 40gig HDD

[goobis]

Hey guys, I have 2 40 gig HD's 1 good and 1 bad,it gets to the Windows ME screen but just stays there, with the blue bar at the bottom endlessly scanning across.(Yes both HD's have ME). Now for a Brief time, I was able to see the data on the bad HD, when I made it a Slave to the good one. But I can't get it to let me take some jpegs I need from it. Any Suggestions? I looked up Data Recovery Systems to See how much it would cost(about $300. dollars). I'm trying to do this the most economical way. (By the way, what is the refrigerator method,and does it work?)Also is there something making it lock up as it does (like having ME on both drives ,I thought since it was a slave that wouldn't matter. Anyway any advice would be appreciated. Thank You in Advance.

 

[tomaso11]

The refrigerator method is a way to totally destroy your hard drive at a very low cost.
The idea only works for damaged motor bearings on very old
drives i.e when a 1.2 gb drive was the norm and large sums
of money wre spent on HUGE 10 gb drives.
Obtain the factory utilities and check it out.You could also download a free trial of something like "Hard Drive Mechanic" and give that a go.
Are your drives a matching pair? You may be able to swap controller boards.

 

[satrow]

Sorry, tomaso11, I've seen the refrigerator method enable data recovery on a 30GB drive so it may still be feasible here.

Go with the factory utilities/controller board swap suggestions first.

Get a new drive ready to dump the recovered data to.

Andy.

 

[nipester]

Why dont you try booting from a windows ME boot floppy and then see if you can get to those jpg files in DOS. Copy them from D to C. Sometimes DOS makes it easier to get files off a flakey hard drive because windows has a habit of reading files even when it doesnt really need to, for an "enhanced browising experience" through explorer for example.

 

[goobis]

Hey folks, No I don't think I will use the Refrigerator Method, But I did get my hands on a copy of Hard Drive Mechanic and the Fat File is Majorly corrupt. I think. Does anyone know how to use it, I didn't get any instructions with it. I made a Boot Disk, removed autoexec & config sys as it tells me. Restarted the pc with the boot disk then load the Mechanic's Disk, the program loads, now it won't recognize the HD if I go to Smart, (an icon that Identifies the HD) where it identifies the disk, but if I go to Diagnostics and all the physical & logical build and choose files it recognizes the HD. Now here I get stuck, because it won't fix the FAT file I depress the icon, and it locks up, any suggestions. Thanks again

 

[nipester]

Yes, get your hands on another program.

Also, did you try to see if you can acces the drive through plain DOS, since you could in windows before?