[TriLUG] Hard drive recovery

[Owen Berry]

This sounds a little out of my depth. Also, doesn't this kind of activity
void the warranty?

I have a Western Digital, which have treated me well over the years ...
until now. Hmmm, maybe a switch is due.

Thanks,
Owen

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 01:35:57PM -0400, James Brigman wrote:
> Owen - I've recovered drives with failed electronics before, same as
> Mark Shuford describes. I was using Maxtor drives in the 6-9GB range,
> and realized the electronics were identical, except that each board had
> different "code names" on the solder mask: I think one was "leopard" and
> the other was "tiger" or something like that. They were, at one time,
> using this convention to distinguish releases of the electronics.
> 
> Anyway: I took the dead 6GB drive, put the board on from a 9GB drive and
> was once again able to see the data. I copied the data off, wiped the
> original data, then restored the broke electronic board to the failed
> Maxtor drive.
> 
> *customer testimonal, not spam*
> I exchanged the drive under Maxtor's "advance replacement" program. They
> treated me so well that I've stuck with their products ever since (and
> have had only that one failure in about 8 years of using their drives. 
> *end of testimonial*
> 
> JKB
> 
> On Fri, 2005-08-26 at 20:32 -0400, Owen Berry wrote:
> > This morning my wife's computer crashed, the hard drive started making
> > clicking noises, and, when rebooted would get past the BIOS startup and
> > then stop with a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner of the
> > screen. The only good sign is that the BIOS detects the hard drive.
> > 
> > Seems pretty bad. My first thought was to try to recover whatever
> > possible using Knoppix. Tried booting off the CD, but all I got was the
> > flashing cursor. Went into the BIOS and double checked that the CD drive
> > came before the hard drive in terms of startup devices - it was. To be
> > sure, I changed all 3 options to be the CD drive. Still the same result.
> > 
> > I tried unplugging the hard drive and then booting off Knoppix, and
> > everything worked fine. Any ideas what I could be missing here?
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > -- Owen
> > 
> > 
> 
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