If the drive is still turning then the freezer trick will be of no help. Try recovery programs or a live version of Linux. You may also try connecting to another computer internally as a slave drive. The OS may have become too corrupted to boot but data may still be accessible. Below are some links that may help. The recovery programs need to be run from a working computer with the bad drive connected as a slave (not boot drive). At any rate, the more you allow it to run the less likely you are to recover anything. Your issue is why you should ALWAYS maintain at least two copies of any data you wish to keep. http://www.all.kernel.org/ PC Inspector (freeware) http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinsp... Zero assumption Recovery http://www.z-a-recovery.com The demo is limited It will only recover 'up to' four folders per run But you can make multiple runs IMO the best, but not free GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/

0

Thanks for that.

0

I was listening to the podcast Security Now, and they mentioned something similar. (For reference, Steve works with/on HDDs for a living): STEVE: I also picked up a comment, I don't remember now why, but I was watching you, Leo, on the weekend, on your Tech Guy show. And a caller was talking about their drive clicking. LEO: Yes. STEVE: And the drive was no longer working, and it was clicking. And I hear that enough that I just wanted to address that briefly. That clicking is what the drive does when it is arguably at or past life, unfortunately. LEO: Oh. STEVE: [T]he drive will put the heads out on the surface and try to obtain a servo lock. // [T]he drive's ability to lock onto this servo information is the first thing it does when it puts the heads out. If it's unable to acquire that servo information, it'll mov[e] the heads around, looking for it. That's the click you hear. Still STEVE: [T]hat clicking is the drive's inability, essentially, to get itself going. There's nothing else it can do. And so what you hear is a clickitic, clickitic, clickitic, clickitic. LEO: Uh-huh, uh-huh. STEVE: And it's not until the drive achieves that servo lock that it . . . says, "I'm online." So essentially the drive is offline. There's nothing any software can do. Sometimes this is where you put the drive in the refrigerator because that's an old-school approach. But, I mean, you're literally - you don't have many boots left of this - on a drive that's doing that. LEO: Well, now, let's distinguish that between a drive that's having trouble reading a sector and trying over and over again. That sounds a little bit like a clickety, too. That's like an eh-eh, eh-eh, eh-eh. STEVE: Yes. There can be that. But I guess there's a - it's a louder, sort of distinctive sound which you will hear shortly after you power up the system where the drive is just kind of going geklunkit, geklankit, geklankit, geklankit, geklankit.

0