Ok, I cant get past Verifying DMI Pool on startup. Also I cant get it to boot into safe mode. I have been into the bios and fiddled around with the startup order, disconnected all the other drives (cd, floppy), pulled the battery for 45 minutes to reset the cmos, none of it has worked. I am pretty sure the maxtor hd is checking out. It is clicking and clacking like a NYC subway. I have taken it out completely and vacuum sealed and frozen it, and still it cant get past Verifying. The drive is still recognized when it is hooked up. Is there anything else I can do to save this thing long enough to extract a couple of files? Maybe in the BIOS or something? HELP! and, Thanks in advance!

Try connecting as a slave in a different system. If the drive is making that much noise I don't think there is much hope.

If it will spin this will recover the data. If the drive is dead it will tell you so. It may take hours/days depending on the drive size. http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

per, how do i use spinrite? in other words how do i get this app onto my hd? the website is not very clear on that.

It is not Freeware. $29.00 to $89.00 depending on the "flavour" you'd like; http://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm It's a good day when you learn something