Hard Drive Problem

Hey all. So, my dad’s hard drive has failed…and we aren’t able to find anything useful. He had a 64-Bit Windows 7, and a couple of days ago it stopped responding. He tried booting from it and it no longer works. The BIOS recognizes it, but when looking for it when the computer boots up it doesn’t show. Anybody have any suggestions?
Answer #1
got a boot CD or DVD to see if you can boot to that and diagnose the drive
Hiren’s BootCD is a good one for that
got another PC to try the drive in ?
or a USB enclosure ?
Answer #2
We tried putting it in two other puters as a slave drive, but to no avail, we dont have a Win7 disk :/ and my dad is against downloading stuff like that…the computers we tried don’t even recognize that there is another HD except for in the BIOS menu, and if we try to boot from it the computer just locks up
Answer #3
Is the stuff on the drive important?
You have a few options, but is the drives data important?
Answer #4
Yeah, my Dad has a paper due tonight and he really needs a document saved on the drive
Answer #5
Try a repair install of the OS ……… might work. You checked the drive power and data cable connections?
You sure the drive doesn’t spin? If the BIOS recognizes it something must be working.
You could also try taking the drive out, wrapping it up in plastic and putting it in the freezer overnight. Than reinstall it and see if it works.
Answer #6
He said that the drive is spinning, it’s just not being recognized by Windows XP or Vista. And he said something about the freezer thing wouldnt work but I didn’t hear why and he’s not in the best of moods :/
Answer #7
google “freezer trick”
it’s worked for me more than once, but not always
and what’s to lose if it don’t work
Answer #8
Doesn’t sound like a physical problem to me, It’s still recognized in BIOS.
Check disk management (winkey+r>diskmgmt.msc) and see if you can right click it
and assign a partition, If no luck there, Give file scavenger a go (data recovery app)
Answer #9
Get a Windows 7 cd boot from it and repair the MBR via command line I had this problem before.
Answer #10
Soooooo we got a USB enclosure. Its now recognized, but when we try to access it it says that it wants to format it, and no other options except for cancel…
Answer #11
try file recovery software like “Active file recovery” or “GetDataBack”
also get “Hard Disk Sentinel” to check the drives health
Answer #12
I’m afraid that if you won’t get it to work by fixing MBR or repairing it with dedicated app (see producers site) or some freely available apps like above, then you won’t be able to do it at all. If you really need that data, give the drive to some experienced data recovery guys (professionals). It will cost you though – I’d guess anything between a hundred and a couple thousand dollars, depending on the nature of the fault.
Whatever happens next, please, do not forget about the lesson you (well, thanks to your dad ) learned today. Cardinal, first rule of computing is: all drives fail, always make a backup copy. Murphy would say that drives that contain important data fail twice as often as those with unimportant data.
Really, always make a backup. Everybody learns that sooner or later, and most of us do it the hard way.
Answer #13
Lol yeah :p well thanks guys for your time