recovering data....

[marseille]

My almost-new (since August....) 120-GB Western Digital (7200 rpm) hard drive died Saturday morning. I went to sleep and left the computer on, and when I woke up, it had somehow rebooted and gotten stuck.

When I boot it makes the terrible grinding noise, and gets stuck in the boot process. Have already contacted Western Digital and they're sending me a replacement, as I was under warranty.

Is there any way I can get any of the data off this old drive before I send it off to Western Digital? (that's part of the warranty agreement....) I have most of it backed up, but not my Outlook file with important info, addresses, ebay auction info, etc, etc in it.....

Any info at all is appreciated.....rebuilding the machine is bad enough, but I worry about the several months of lost email data I'd saved......I've never had a hard drive fail before, and didn't expect it with such a new one.....

Any info is *greatly* appreciated.....I'm rather panicked....

Thanks so much.
Marseille

 

[gothitbycar]

Try turning it upside down and lightly tap it or softly drop it on a desk. After that, keep it upside down and try running it like that. It sounds like a write/read head got stuck inside a platter. Don't expect any miracles though, that grinding noise, as you can tell, is a very bad sign.

It may not boot windows if it got damaged during boot but you may be able to get to the information if you can access it from another computer.

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