Harddrive Errors

[Zenon]

Hey all,
Just thought i would get a few opinions here. Basically i have a 120gb harddrive that packedup a few months ago after i accidentally hit it. Anyways i need the hard drive again and am trying to fix it.
I have gotten a few opinions of people from irc but i need a second opinion or two.
Basically the HDD is running really slow, like initially it takes a few mins to detect in the bios page. But after that it takes even longer. IE if i have it as the master drive and i have the XP disk in my DVD drive. it gets stuck on a black screen between the Boot from CD page and the blue XP CD boot screen.
Gets stuck here for about 10mins maybe.
I loaded up spinrite and went to check it in that but then it was going to take like 48 hours to check the drive fully. Fuck that!
any ideas anyone?

[<3 Ropey]

nice harddrive errors make them for men?

[Snazz]

Are you trying to get precious data off it?
There's a few useful data recovery programs out there that should be able to get what you want off it as long as the drives still basically functioning and detecting in windows. I'd personally not bother booting off a slow old drive and instead connect it up as a secondary drive with windows booting off a better primary drive.

Otherwise i'd just throw it out, a new 120GB SATA hard drive is roughly $40 nowdays.

The 500GB SATA II seems to be the sweet spot atm, roughly between $90 & $125 on online stores.

http://staticice.com.au - useful search engine for online Australian PC store prices

In the past i've lost my data several times because of forced reformatting (before i seperated system from data using partitions) then hard drive fails (160GB, 80GB, 120GB and another 120GB - all IDE), so I've gotten pretty used to it myself.
I still don't really backup anything (haven't lost any data on SATA yet and cbf burning upto 600GB onto dvd) but I plan to setup a RAID 1 soon to try and at least half the chances of data loss.

[zyaN]

I PLAN TO SETUP A RAID ON BLACKROCK.

[Zenon]

Thanks, There was no data on it but i need to backup all my stuff desperately so i can rebuild and ive run out of dvd's.
ive got it running in windows its just really slow. Like it will freeze the whole pc for a few seconds every few secs if im copying data to it, otherwise it runs fine. So its bearable for now. But thanks for your help, i might have a look for a new HDD and get past 100 gig

[brendon]

I PLAN TO SETUP A RAID ON BLACKROCK.
ROFL!

[Super Cockroach]

Another option would be to use something like ultimate boot disk, ubuntu, or some other form of cd based os and to stream the content you want from one hdd to another on the network or a usb hdd.

[Joshu]

streaming; not just for viewing content while you download it anymore

[Super Cockroach]

Thanks for pointing that out

[<3 Ropey]

nice post editing make it for men?

[Aphex]

what brand is it? if seagate use seatools to find issues, alternativly use partition magic to partition parts of the drive that may not work (If you can get it running) what interface is it? IDE or SATA? check to make sure power connectors on HDD are not damaged.
sounds as if there's a damaged area of the disk, it also sounds like it's simply dying!!! and nothing can be done...

there's pleanty of manufacturer appz that you can use to diagnose issues on you HDD, and typically it'll create a partion around damaged areas of the drive so that there's no fuck up's in windows...

[radass]

try putting it in the freezer for a bit

[radass]

(If it's not spinning)
http://www.datarecoverypros.com/hard-drive-recovery-freeze.html

[dominatrix]

OMG DAVE!

[Peter]

we missed you dave!