Hard Drive Failure?

[Mafai]

Woke up today frozen on desktop and rebooted. No boot device found, no hard drive detected in BIOS.

Had to head off to work, would you say the drive is dead? Asking because I'd rather just pickup a new drive on the way home then drive home, instead of trying to fix it, only to end up going out later.

[Linliel]

I always like to at least try unplugging and replugging a drive like that. Pick up a new drive anyway and make it a backup if the other still works.

[Mafai]

Yea I wokeup after I was supposed to be at work, so I didnt have time to do that. Honestly I shouldnt have even looked at my pc.

[Kriz]

As Linliel said, I'd let it sit for a while to think about what it's done. If BIOS can't see it randomly that's a pretty huge change from working to dead. I'd check all the connections and such, and if possible try the drive on a second computer.

For normal hard drive failures I like to recommend SpinRite, which saves drives that fail due to bad sectors and the like pretty dependably, but if you can't see it in BIOS, that's a big problem.

[Mafai]

Yea it will be off until I am home from work. I guess ill pickup a new HDD and if the old one turns out to just be a bad connection, I will move all my data onto this drive.

[Spekkio]

if a drive is suspect, consider it dead. 80 bucks for a new drive will look reeeeeeeeealy cheap after you lose your data b/c you were too lazy to get it to a new drive. don't play games with questionable drives, just let them go.

[Norellicus]

This is going to sound batshit crazy and I don't recommend doing it often, and it may not help your case at all since the drive doesn't show up in bios...

But if you have a drive that isn't reading reliably and really need to boot it to recover some data, put it in your freezer for about 4 hours. Take it out and immediately plug in and boot up. You'll get 10-15 minutes of consistent read/write out of it, plenty of time in many cases to get vital data off. If you aren't quite done yet, leave it for a day to completely thaw and do it again...I've been able to make this work 2-3 times in a row, beyond that the drive really does tend to be toast though.

[Mafai]

Yea ive heard the same before. Now that ive done some thinking, I just recalled my cat was messing around near my cases last night. I am not sure what he could have done (or if its just a coincidence), but maybe he messed something up. I'm just hoping for the best. I picked up a 1tb drive on my lunch today either way.

[Spekkio]

This is going to sound batshit crazy and I don't recommend doing it often, and it may not help your case at all since the drive doesn't show up in bios...

But if you have a drive that isn't reading reliably and really need to boot it to recover some data, put it in your freezer for about 4 hours. Take it out and immediately plug in and boot up. You'll get 10-15 minutes of consistent read/write out of it, plenty of time in many cases to get vital data off. If you aren't quite done yet, leave it for a day to completely thaw and do it again...I've been able to make this work 2-3 times in a row, beyond that the drive really does tend to be toast though.

i usually make sure i load in a bag of desiccant and seal it before i load it in the freezer. i assume ice crystals anywhere in the system can't help the situation. if you don't have a bag of silica gel lying around (and how many people really do unless they've bought new shoes or something lately) you can actually use a small quantity of rice to deliver a similar effect. (Desiccant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) as said above tho, the odds of it helping in your case aren't good. if there's critical data on there and you have some electronics experience, you can at least check the board for blatantly blown caps you could try replacing.

[Norellicus]

Theoretically there won't be anything crystallized inside since very little moisture to begin with (unless you keep your house stupidly humid or something >_>)...that's why I say wait a day before trying again though, to make sure it doesn't condense when exposed to air again and then cause trouble on subsequent attempts.

But yeah, not a bad idea. A ziploc freezer bag would accomplish the same thing I believe.

[Spekkio]

i'm less concerned about it on the inside of the drive on the plates as there's really very little air exchange through the breathing hole. what concerns me is a thin layer of ice forming on the circuit card on the underside of the drive. an uneven coating of ice forming on metal circuits could go south in so many ways i'd rather just be neurotic and overdo it than not. it's probably not necessary, but it sure can't hurt.