Hard drive failure

[tigerclaws]

Hope you can help me, i had a second hard drive (e) installed into my
computer, it has been there for about six months, now all of a sudden the
computer can not locate it. Is there anyway i can get it located it, if not,
is there a way for me to get back all my pictures from it? Thank you a head
of time.

 

[Malke]

tigerclaws wrote:
> Hope you can help me, i had a second hard drive (e) installed into my
> computer, it has been there for about six months, now all of a sudden the
> computer can not locate it. Is there anyway i can get it located it, if not,
> is there a way for me to get back all my pictures from it? Thank you a head
> of time.

Is the hard drive seen in the BIOS (before Windows loads)? Here are some
troubleshooting steps to get you started:

1. With the computer unplugged, open the case and reseat the cable going
from the motherboard to the hard drive. Reseat both ends of this cable.
Also reseat the power connector going to the drive. Restart the computer
(without closing up the case). Is the drive seen in the BIOS now?

2. If the drive is still not seen in the BIOS, swap out the cable for a
known-working one.

3. If swapping out the cable doesn't work, pull the drive and slave in
another computer. Can it be seen in that computer's BIOS? If not, the
drive has failed and the only way to get data off it is to send it to a
professional data recovery service such as Drive Savers. This can be
quite expensive, normally starting at around $500 USD and going up from
there. Only you can determine the value of your data.

4. Going back to Step 1 above, if the hard drive *is* seen in the BIOS
but not in Windows, I would boot with a rescue system such as Knoppix or
a Bart's PE and pull off the data before doing anything else. Copy to an
external drive or burn to CD/DVD-R from within the rescue system.

Standard caveat: Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out
suspected parts with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing
yourself and/or are uncomfortable opening your computer, take the
machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local
equivalent of BigStoreUSA). Have all your data backed up before you take
the machine into a shop.

When this is all over, create a backup strategy and stick to it because
with computers, Stuff Will Always Happen.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User