HD Failure

[Russian Mafia]

I have a 1TB external hard drive. While playing a game the other day, the comp froze and I restarted it. When it turned back on I couldn't access the HD. I restarted again and the computer did a check on the HD that lasted several hours, but I stall can't access it. I really need the data on it because I use it as my main HD and it has over 600 GB of games, apps, music, pictures, and documents. Any ideas?

 

[DEATHMASTER]

I assume you tried stuff in BIOS? If you have another drive with an OS, set it as master and this one as slave and maybe you could drag and drop some essential things. I did it when one of my drives messed up.

 

[soulslicer]

Connect the drive to another system and try it, if all else fails.

 

[giant384]

its an external drive....

so chkdsk didnt fix anything?

you might want to use some sort of hard drive diagnostic program like pccheck or something similar.

 

[Russian Mafia]

Connect the drive to another system and try it, if all else fails.

Tried, same result.

its an external drive....

so chkdsk didnt fix anything?

you might want to use some sort of hard drive diagnostic program like pccheck or something similar.

I'll try this.

Edit- I downloaded it. PCCKECK.DLL, right? Do I put it on a disc and boot it up through the BIOS?

 

[giant384]

Tried, same result.



I'll try this.

Edit- I downloaded it. PCCKECK.DLL, right? Do I put it on a disc and boot it up through the BIOS?

yes boot the disk before startup

 

[Russian Mafia]

I couldn't get the CD to boot. I googled around and found that some people were able to access their drive by using Firewire as appose to USB. I'll go to the store tomorrow for the cable.

 

[Beerdude26]

If nothing else works, put the hard drive in the freezer in a bag (so it doesn't get humid) and leave it in for a few hours. Usually you can get some extra hours (or sometimes a few minutes, depends) out of it. Enough to get important stuff off.

 

[giant384]

If nothing else works, put the hard drive in the freezer in a bag (so it doesn't get humid) and leave it in for a few hours. Usually you can get some extra hours (or sometimes a few minutes, depends) out of it. Enough to get important stuff off.

what???

 

[No Limit]

what???

The idea is that the low temperature will shrink the heads allowing them to spin. This will only work if the heads are bad and I personally would not recommend this unless you hear the hard drive grinding. If humidity builds up, which is very likely, anything that might be recoverable on that drive will be lost, not to mention you will void your warranty.

Have you already went in to diskmanagement (start > run diskmgmt.msc)? Does your drive show up there and if it does what status does it show?

 

[Barney Fife]

what???

lol Rookie. Haven't you ever freeze a HD before :upstare:?

 

[giant384]

sadly no....that hasnt been a thought when doing IT work.

 

[Russian Mafia]

No Limit- It comes up and says that it's healthy.

I used a data recovery program and it found all of the files, but to copy them I need to buy the full version. :frown:

 

[Barney Fife]

I used a data recovery program and it found all of the files, but to copy them I need to buy the full version. :frown:

Oh! Crap!!! I guess It's that time hunting at your preferred you know what. :naughty:

sadly no....that hasnt been a thought when doing IT work.

Neither did I. I smell sarcasm and beer all over Beerdude

 

[Iliketobenaked]

No Limit- It comes up and says that it's healthy.

I used a data recovery program and it found all of the files, but to copy them I need to buy the full version. :frown:

you don't buy shit friend....its the Internet.
good luck man I know how it hurts when a important HD dies.

 

[Russian Mafia]

Heh, I reformatted the drive and it works again. Time to reinstall, redownload
all of my games.

 

[No Limit]

I was gonna say before you format that if it shows up in the disk management console as healthy but you don't see if under my computer that usually means a drive letter simply wasn't assigned to it in windows. I have no clue why this happens but it tends to happen with external drives.

So if you get this again simply right click on the hard drive in the console and click "assign drive letter". This wont affect any of your regular files but if you are storing games on it make sure you assign the same drive letter it had before.