Computer cannot detect hard drive! Help!

bz2h

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Nov 15, 2010
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I have a WD 1TB hard drive that I had taken out from my old computer and placed in a 3.5 inch hard drive enclosure. A week ago it just stopped working in middle of my usage, and my computer cannot detect it ever since. I have tried it on other computers, and taken it out of the enclosure and installed it on my desktop to no avail. The drive does spin up (I can feel the vibration when it's in the enclosure), and when i have it installed on my desktop, the POST took longer than usual as through BIOS had detected something, but in the end it still doesn't show up in windows or BIOS. I have tried SeaTool and it can't detect it either.

Any idea on what I should do? the freezer trick probably doesn't work since that is to deal with drives that doesn't spin up.

And if there is nothing I can do, do you guys know of any affordable data recovery companies? I got some quotes around 700 bucks but I'm a university student and simply can't afford that. I'm looling for data recoveries less than 400 while still being professional and all. And just by the way, the closer it is to Edmonton the better.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for boring you all with this rather long post
 
Solution
"The POST took longer than usual..." just means that, during the POST process, the system tired to access the drive and failed, then re-tried many times before giving up. It does not mean it had partial success.

I am not sure whether Seatools can examine a WD drive properly, so you might try downloading the WD utility Data Lifeguard. Start here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

to select your HDD model and get the right version.

Personally, I prefer to get the "for DOS" version. Usually you download an .iso image file and then have to burn it to your own CD-R to create a bootable optical disk. You can boot from that disk completely independent of any OS (even if your machine's HDD's are not working) and it will...

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
"The POST took longer than usual..." just means that, during the POST process, the system tired to access the drive and failed, then re-tried many times before giving up. It does not mean it had partial success.

I am not sure whether Seatools can examine a WD drive properly, so you might try downloading the WD utility Data Lifeguard. Start here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

to select your HDD model and get the right version.

Personally, I prefer to get the "for DOS" version. Usually you download an .iso image file and then have to burn it to your own CD-R to create a bootable optical disk. You can boot from that disk completely independent of any OS (even if your machine's HDD's are not working) and it will load its own mini-DOS into RAM and run all the utility's tools from there.

That said, I agree the prognosis is poor - it does appear the old HDD is dead. Good luck!
 
Solution