[TriLUG] hard drive fail

[Bill Chan]

Hi all,

My hard drive crashed recently and when I start my computer up, my bios
says hard drive fail, no matter which IDE drive I use.  This is a Maxtor
hard drive, 3 years old, 80Gb, NTFS, but does not have any operating
system on it.  I am running a Windows XP system and I was wondering if
anyone has suggestions on data recovery.  Unfortunately, I was stupid
enough not to back up my data over the years and there is some stuff on
there I would like to get off.  I tried the freezer trick, but that
didn't really work for me, although it got the drive spinning again.  I
am running out of options, any ideas?  TIA.

--Bill