Ladies & Gentlemen: Happy Fourth!

"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
...
most likely you have a bad sector (physically) on your hard drive, bad
enough within the boot sector. Most likely your harddrive is short before
dead. Download test tools from your harddrive manufactor and check your
harddrive

Constant seeking like that described suggests a problem with the servo
platter (which the drive uses as a reference for head position). If the
reference is bad, there's no way any utility software can recover from that.
Furthermore, having the drive powered on trying to fix it just increases the
chances that the drive will get further damaged (especially if the problem
with the servo platter is that a head crashed...there's probably debris
floating around in the drive at that point, which could lead to further head
crashes, as well as cause the servo platter to be damaged even more).

If the data is backed up, and there is 100% no chance of taking the drive to
a recovery service, then there's no harm in messing around with utility
software. And there's a remote chance it might help. But otherwise, the
best course of action is to leave the drive powered down.

Pete

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 10:17:51 -0700, Peter Duniho wrote:

If the data is backed up, and there is 100% no chance of taking the drive to
a recovery service, then there's no harm in messing around with utility
software. And there's a remote chance it might help. But otherwise, the
best course of action is to leave the drive powered down.

and what should the OP do with the powered down harddrive? He can't lose a
thing - no matter if his data is backed up or not. Just try to recover your
data on the first attempt.

#m
--
Did you ever realize how much text fits in eighty columns? If you now consider
that a signature usually consists of up to four lines, this gives you enough
space to spread a tremendous amount of information with your messages. So seize
this opportunity and don't waste your signature with bull**** nobody will read.

"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 10:17:51 -0700, Peter Duniho wrote:

If the data is backed up, and there is 100% no chance of taking the drive
to
a recovery service, then there's no harm in messing around with utility
software. And there's a remote chance it might help. But otherwise, the
best course of action is to leave the drive powered down.

and what should the OP do with the powered down harddrive? He can't lose a
thing - no matter if his data is backed up or not. Just try to recover
your
data on the first attempt.

Do you *ever* bother to read these messages before you reply? Just to make
things easier for you, I'll leave in the text YOU QUOTED that explains what
you don't seem to be able to figure out yourself.

As I said already (and I guess you either forgot already or didn't bother to
read in the first place...see quoted text above), the reason to keep the
drive powered down is to avoid additional damage, so that a *professional*
data recovery service has a better chance of recovering the data.

The average user, if they really need the data back, all they are going to
accomplish by futzing around themselves with the drive is to make it harder
for someone who knows what they are doing to recover the data. It's much
better to keep the thing powered down than to mess with it.

Got it now? Or should I explain it a third time?

Pete

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006 14:03:14 -0700, Peter Duniho wrote:


Got it now? Or should I explain it a third time?

I already got it in the first place.

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.

Pete

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

#m
--
Did you ever realize how much text fits in eighty columns? If you now consider
that a signature usually consists of up to four lines, this gives you enough
space to spread a tremendous amount of information with your messages. So seize
this opportunity and don't waste your signature with bull**** nobody will read.

"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

"Peter Duniho" wrote

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.

New symptoms. Now it isn't doing squat. It might have been a motherboard
problem. One part of it was getting very warm. I suspect the power supply,
too. Who knows! Gads!

That being said, this is a personal PC, and 90% of what is on that drive is
newsgroup letters I have saved, and some Internet links I have bookmarked.
The other drive has pictures and stuff like that, and it is backed up. The
drive in question is not backed up.

My son is about to graduate from App State, and part of his major is knowing
what to do with something like this. He might even have software for
recovering some of the data; I'm not sure.

I am capable of doing some trouble shooting, but I think I'll lay back, and
put some of my investment to work, if you know what I mean! g
--
Jim in NC