Clicking hard drive

[Detonator]

I have a computer with a dead hard disk. Bios will not recognize it on bootup, and the drive just emits a series of clicks. The rest of the computer works ok, checked it with another disk I had around, all is good. i have already ordered a replacement drive.

Is there any way to retrieve the data off the old drive? The computer belongs to my boss, and while he has learned the hard way about back-ups, he would like his data back. If I can't do it, he understands, its not important enough to him to use a data recovery service. It would be cool if I could do this for him, though.

thanks.

 

[Lee]

Thick waterproof and air proof bag.

Wrap the drive in it and make sure it's sealed (the bag).

Freeze it for a few hours.

Add it as a slave and save files from drive.

I have been told this can work, never done it myself as I backup everyday to an external disk and a partition on my HD. So if one fails I can still do something about it.

 

[ejn74]

I've heard of that method as well. Never have had to try it though.

It may work for you.

 

[LordOfLA]

Drives like that are terminal. You can only get data back by sending it off to a data recovery place.

 

[Weasel]

Thick waterproof and air proof bag.

Wrap the drive in it and make sure it's sealed (the bag).

Freeze it for a few hours.

Add it as a slave and save files from drive.

I have been told this can work, never done it myself as I backup everyday to an external disk and a partition on my HD. So if one fails I can still do something about it.

I've never heard of this actually working and it never has for myself personally (went through a lot of drives back in the day) but your results might differ. Typically if I hear the dreaded "click click" from a hard drive I just rip it out and go to town on it with a hammer; it's pretty much toast.

 

[lancer]

a clicking drive is a totally dead drive, its physically damaged beyond reading/writing.