Hello I recently experienced a hard drive problem, my hard drive (IDE) which is a Hitachi 250 GB 7200rpm after carrying it to a friend’s house stop working properly ..is not recognized by the bios and even though that at the start spins normally and makes the normal sound after a while it makes a clicking noise, The drive contains 160 gb of data of which 50 gb (pictures and documents) are really important . The shop that I bought it from can refund it or exchange it alternatively I can return it back to Hitachi and get a replacement one . “But they cannot recover my data or repair the hard drive.” (I don’t know how legal is that and I question it) The problem is that the hard drive contains vital data for me and I cannot pay more than £100 for it. The cheapest company that I found http://www.easyrecovery.co.uk/ will charge me about £250 to recover the data. One guy in a pc shop that looked at my drive said that it might be the chip board of the drive and if I could find a similar one he can change it… I don’t want to loose my data and I can’t afford to pay to much, Please if anyone can recommend something , a cheaper company ..or any shop,person that can fix it in the U.K …or even a guide to try to fix it my self as a last resort I would appreciate it a lot . Please reply to this forum or e-mail me at panos100m@gmail.com Thanks Peter

This may or may not work but it won't harm your drive. Put your HDD in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer for about 2 hours. Take it out of the freezer and see if it will run temporarily while you try to get your data off.

“But they cannot recover my data or repair the hard drive.” (I don’t know how legal is that and I question it) Perfectly legal. Repairing a faulty hard drive is hardly ever an economical proposition, thats why data recover costs so much - many times more than the disk is worth. If the disk needs to be opened up it has to be done in a clean room to avoid contamination by airborne particles. The clicking noise is usually an indication of a failure in the head seek mechanism. The could have been caused by mishandling during transit. The fridge trick described above is worth a try. It often rejuvenates a drive just long enough to get data of it. Stuart

Is that the "Deathstar" Hitachi? The clicking noise is never a good sign. You can try the freezer trick, but when you go to hook it up, I suggest you connect it to a working system as a data drive on the 2ndary channel...don't try to boot off it & run the OS ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

If the drive is under warranty, DO NOT take it to someone to replace components on it, it will void the warranty. Unfortunately, equipment manufacturers are not responsible for recovery of your data. That is what BACKUPS are for. Rule #1 Good computers don't go down. Rule #2 There is no such thing as a good computer.

I called Ontrack Data Recovery Services. 1-800-752-7557 I used there free trial, found my software and then paid $200 for the software to save data on another drive. I called 8 data recover places. http://support.wdc.com/partners/recovery.asp Easy Recovery Data Recovery http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery/ Since my data had been mistakenly deleted on a second phycical hard drive, and the drive had not been repartitioned, this software worked wonders. All my data is back 100%.

Recovering data that has been accidentally deleted from a functioning HDD is one thing, but trying to recover it from a defective HDD is completely different ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1