pc harddrive broken

[mo1e]

Hey guys I have a dilemma. I have an old pc I'm wanting to run mame but I think the harddrive is bust. Here's my question if I buy a new harddrive and install it have I lost  all my roms and stuff and will all the programs I installed on the pc still be there? And if not will my bookmarked webpages still be on it so I can gather all my roms and such? Sorry I've never installed a harddrive.

[ark_ader]

Define broken.  Is it a desktop hard drive?  Is it clicking?  Or are you hearing a thud and clunking sound?    If it is clicking it might be a PSU issue, otherwise you have a dead chipmunk in your drive.

Two things you can do if it is not clinking and clunking.

1. Get a plastic bag (without holes) and stick the Hard Drive in the bag and put the bag (very important) in the freezer for an hour.  Then stick it back in the PC and power on.  If the drive works - move your ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- off it as fast as you can.  I told this to a customer once who placed the bag in the freezer then waited an hour and saying that it didn't work.  Due to me not explicitly telling him to put the hard drive in the bag.     True Story.

2. Find the exact hard drive and replace the mainboard, then try to power on the drive, and move your ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- off as fast as you can.

Or

3. Buy a new drive (not a ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- Seagate) and source the roms again. [Don't ask]

This is a good lesson on why there is backup solutions available and why we (who do backups at work) always forget at home and lose our ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.  I might have about 4 sets of my collection stored on sealed hard drives, just because of this very reason.

[mo1e]

Well harddrive are cheap enough now anyways. But I take it that means if I have to get a new one then my pc will gave lost everything? Including installed programs and recent documents?

[Dawgz Rule]

The hard drive in the freezer trick can sometimes work wonders.  Saved the day more than a few times in my work.   

[Vigo]

Well harddrive are cheap enough now anyways. But I take it that means if I have to get a new one then my pc will gave lost everything? Including installed programs and recent documents?

Well, yeah, all your data is on your hard drive. You get a new hard drive, nothing will remain. Not just links and programs, but the operating system itself will be gone. You will need to reinstall windows and everything.

There are various degrees of broken hard drive tho. If it is just corrupted data, you could either fix possibly fix the corrupted data, or once you have a new drive set up, you could plug in the old hard drive as a secondary disk and Pull all the data from it.

[mo1e]

That's bad news. Looks like my whole rig is going into the freezer

Thanks for the freezer tip guys I will give this a shot.

[yotsuya]

The freezer trick has NEVER worked for me. 

[SavannahLion]

The freezer trick has NEVER worked for me. 

Depends on why the drive fails I guess. I have a Seagate (wasn't a choice to put it on there I'm afraid) drive that I really really want to get the rest of the data off. The freezer trick works up to about 70% of the drive but I can't read past a certain sector. Every tool I've ever thrown at that damn drive wants to read that damn sector and absolutely refuses to allow me to skip the sector and move to the next. Not sure why. What I have salvaged off of it has been worth the effort of using the freezer even if it wasn't 100%.

[CCM]

Freezer trick has never worked for me either...

mo1e, you still haven't given much detail... 'I think the harddrive is bust'  doesn't tell us much.  What exactly is the computer doing?   I'm not trying to be difficult, but from your initial post it's kinda obvious that you don't know much about computers, so how do you know it's the harddrive and not the motherboard or power supply?

I use Hiren's boot CD all the time, try downloading it and booting into MiniXP and see if you can access anything on your harddrive, if so, copy everything off to an external drive.   If you can't access the drive, there are plenty of hard drive tools on Hiren's boot CD that you can try.



http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

** edited to add link to Hiren's Boot CD

[Louis Tully]

.

[epicfatigue]

Hi guys i worked in data recovery for along time do not freezer bag it.. that is a fix for a very rare problem and its a one time solution.

You have givnen very limited amount of information, firstly i would just download a linux live bootdisc like ultimate boot cd and test if the drive is infact faulty or if its another part.

Also what alot of people do not know that use crts (you might be one of them) if you do not have a grounding plate inbetween your HDD you will slowly but surly wipe it from when the coil fires.

 
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

[Dawgz Rule]

that is a fix for a very rare problem and its a one time solution

Understood.  The point is that it is a "one time" solution that can potentially allow you to recover the data....depending on the failure. 

[Sitnalta]

^^^
In other words stop using the faulty disk.
Buy a new one
Then do the freezer trick (it's a one time opportunity)

[lilshawn]

the more you try to use a faulty hard drive, the less likely you will be able to recover anything from it. The continued use is going to keep hammering away at the disk till it's dead.

and no, don't put it in the freezer. all you are going to do is wreck it more.



stick it away for now until you find someone who can hook it up and try and pull the data off it.

[Howard_Casto]

The freezer will wreck your already damaged drive.  I honestly don't know how that rumor started. 

HDD's should remain at their operating temperature range at all times.  This is to prevent the expansion and contraction of the metal discs which best case scenario would result in serious read errors and worst case scenario could crack the platters. 

do what lilshawn said.  Generally just because a disc can't run a OS due to damage doesn't mean you can't pull 90% of the data off of it. 

Buy a hdd 2 usb adaptor for like 5 bucks and plug it into another pc.... back the whole thing up. 

[Vigo]

Ya know, I never once had a hard drive fail on me. Plenty of data corruption issues, and I have had to reformat from it, I also have had drives with larger bad sectors, but never a fragged HDD. I got plenty of those "evil" seagates as well. Is this really that common of a problem?

[lilshawn]

i keep thinking about the OP's roms... so what. you can download them from about 1000 sites on the net. it's not like he had to spend days and days to rip each and every one from original roms.

as someone who has to deal with 100's of drives in our business. yes they crap out. I'm changing a drive at LEAST once a month.

no it's not worth it for us to mess with it we just replace them. but we have backups/installation disks for everything.

if my work computer drive crapped out right now, i'd be bummed cause it's working how i like it, but it's not a big deal to download everything i need off the net.

if my home computer drive crapped out... it would suck but i also run a separated drive for the OS. so if the OS drive dies, no biggie. all my programs and misc data is backed up to a 2nd drive which is dumped on another USB hard drive and my music/video on a 3rd drive in the computer is backed up to a 4th. (paranoid much?)

so yes, i value my data but yes i have a plan should the unexpected happen and i have about 3 layers of protection for my important stuff and 2 for the misc.

my suggestion. buy 2 new drives...set the system up how you like it...then CLONE the drive. if it goes south...you plop in the clone and you're golden. 

[ark_ader]

the more you try to use a faulty hard drive, the less likely you will be able to recover anything from it. The continued use is going to keep hammering away at the disk till it's dead.

and no, don't put it in the freezer. all you are going to do is wreck it more.



stick it away for now until you find someone who can hook it up and try and pull the data off it.

Like I would take  any advice from a dork like him.  The hard drive in the freezer for all morning?  What a dummy.  Actually I like customers like him.  Those idiots keep me in work. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ya know, I never once had a hard drive fail on me. Plenty of data corruption issues, and I have had to reformat from it, I also have had drives with larger bad sectors, but never a fragged HDD. I got plenty of those "evil" seagates as well. Is this really that common of a problem?

It's quite a common problem.  If a pc gets dropped the read head can get knocked out of alignment and that'll ruin a drive.  This happens on laptops a lot.  Also like any moving part, the bearings eventually wear out.  I've went through a ton of drives over the years and nearly every pc I work on for somebody that won't boot up has a ruined drive. 


It has to do with moving massive files around a lot in the "wear out from use" scenario.  Since we are in this hobby I'm surprised you haven't run into the issue before.  I know of at least two of my drives back in the day that were probably ruined due to mame.   

[Dawgz Rule]

I am with ark_ader on this one.  The freezer isn't the first thing I would do with a hard drive that has issues but when all else fails, in the freezer it goes.  I can count a number of times where giving it the deep freeze has allowed me (or one of my coworkers) to pull the data off of a drive.   In the big scheme of things that may turn out to be a pretty low percentage for success but each and every time it saved us a ton of work.

[Chris John Hunter]

Get a hard drive docking station. Put the HD in the docking station - connect it via USB to the PC. You can read even a corrupted HD. And if its not in the system its easy as pie.

Be able to copy the stuff across in minutes. Best to us a USB Pendrive.

 
Why on earth would you put a magnetic device in a freezer? I've heard it all now.

CJ

[paulscade]

I just have to put in my .02....

The "theory"  behind placing the drive in the freezer is that electronics sometimes fail due to heat.   If the drive is still spinning but can't be read, cooling it down can work.  The freezer trick isn't a rumor..  I've seen it work on more than one occasion...  But it's certainly not the first thing that you should try.

If your data is valuable...  And you absolutely have to have it back... (and I'm not really talking about a bunch of ROMS and configuration files...  But irreplaceable corporate data)... I'd be sending the drive to the professionals for data recovery.  Unfortunately, this is a really expensive undertaking.

If you've made the decision that spending upwards of 1000 dollars (for professional data recovery) isn't for you (it's not for me..  So its been an easy decision for me on the drives that I've lost over the years).... And you've already tried other methods of recovery (boot from other source and try to read disk, etc.)

Why not try the freezer?

I'm failing to see how you could make anything worse... The best that could happen is that you get your data back.   The worst is that you throw away the drive... Which is what you're facing anyway (provided you've decided not to go with any sort of professional data recovery and other methods of access haven't worked).

Paul

[lilshawn]

agreed. absolute last resort where you are tossing it in the trash is your next step.

if you are thinking of a data recovery service, leave it. the less you mess with it, the better your chances of recovery are.

the only think i can think to make the "freezer trick" less harmful would be to leave it in the freezer and power it up (long cords whathaveyou) or immedeatly seal it in a bag somehow with cords inside so you can power it outside the freezer, but without having condensation happen. water is the enemy in this case.