"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
...
I already got it in the first place.

If you already understood what the OP should do with a powered down
harddrive, then why did you write "and what should the OP do with the
powered down harddrive?"

If there was important enough data on the harddrive (read: business
related
data with a user dumb enough to not have a good backup) than I hope that
the OP wouldn't have to ask *here* what to do.

You, of all people, should know by know what making assumptions does for
you.

That said, the OP didn't actually ask here *what* to do. He simply asked
what the funny noise his drive was making *meant*. All of the subsequent
advice offered with respect to *what* to do was unsolicited.

Regardless of whether the advice was solicited or not, that doesn't change
the nature of the advice, nor the correctness of advising someone to leave
the drive alone if they expect to consult a professional data recovery
service.

You can afford a professional harddrive recovery for your private data?
Will you adopt me?

First of all, no...what in the world would make you think I, of all people,
would be willing to adopt you, of all people.

Secondly, whether I can afford professional harddrive recovery for private
data is irrelevant to the question. Whether Jim can afford it is only
*slightly* more relevant, since you don't know whether the data is actually
just personal stuff or not, nor do you have any idea just how much his
personal stuff might be worth even if it is. After you get through
answering those questions, then you might bring up the question of whether
he can afford it or not.

But third, data recovery services are as much about recovering data that
someone can't afford NOT to recover, than it is about recovering data that
they can afford TO recover. They get plenty of business from people who
really can't afford their services, but for whom not recovering the data is
not an option. Asking whether someone can afford it isn't really the right
question.

Not that any of that is relevant to your silly reply to my post.

Pete