hard drive failure

[whatfor]

A few months ago I made the mistake of buying a used hard drive off Ebay. Last night it died on me and at the moment its in the freezer because Ive heard that freezing the drive can get it up and running long enough to get data recovered.
If that solution doesnt work has anyone got any other tried and tested methods I can try. The data on the drive isnt critical ( I never trusted it enough for that)so it isnt worth paying to get the data back but all the same I would like to recover the data if at all possible.thanks for any help going

 

[IanDrexP]

I suggest getting a professional to take a look at it.

 

[whatfor]

I suggest getting a professional to take a look at it.

that will cost and the data isnt critical

 

[IanDrexP]

You never know maybe its just a little problem, take it first for a check up. That should be free

 

[TVeblen]

Depends on what you mean by failure.

The freezer method works when the failure is that the drive will not spin up or the heads are stuck (motor/mechanical problem).

But if the failure is in communication then the problem can be because some component on the circuit board is defective, or the physical connections are defective (sata socket, power socket, cables).

If the drive spins up and you can hear it running you can sometimes have success by replacing the circuit board in the drive with an exact match from another drive (which you have to buy and then destroy). This is a complicated process, definitely not plug and play, so it is still something best left to a experienced tech.
But if you've got nothing to lose it can be a 'fun' project, provided you can find a cheap drive to cannibalize.

 

[Cr00zng]

Heating up the drive may allow you to backup data, if the freezing method doesn't work. Just don't heat it in the microwave...

 

[whatfor]

Depends on what you mean by failure.

The freezer method works when the failure is that the drive will not spin up or the heads are stuck (motor/mechanical problem).

But if the failure is in communication then the problem can be because some component on the circuit board is defective, or the physical connections are defective (sata socket, power socket, cables).

If the drive spins up and you can hear it running you can sometimes have success by replacing the circuit board in the drive with an exact match from another drive (which you have to buy and then destroy). This is a complicated process, definitely not plug and play, so it is still something best left to a experienced tech.
But if you've got nothing to lose it can be a 'fun' project, provided you can find a cheap drive to cannibalize.

I should have said in my post that the drive is not spinning and is in an external caddy. Normally when the drive is idle the caddy displays a green light and when the drive is being written to it shows a red light. The caddy is now showing a red light always

 

[Anthony]

Have you Tried checking the drive using a different method? Example: if its an IDE drive connect it to a computer with a known working IDE cable / power cable It may be the caddy at fault!!

Thanks

 

[whatfor]

Have you Tried checking the drive using a different method? Example: if its an IDE drive connect it to a computer with a known working IDE cable / power cable It may be the caddy at fault!!

Thanks

Ive tried the caddy with another hard drive..caddy works fine

 

[TVeblen]

Testing the caddy is nice. But it is still a good idea to test the hard drive, connected internally in the PC.

 

[Mark Phelps]

When you connect the drive directly to the PC, open the Disk Management utility and see if the drive is listed. If it is and it does not show a Drive letter, you may be able to assign a letter and get access long enough to copy stuff off the drive.