Is it a no go?

[ShunNakamura]

Alright had a computer brought to me. The person tells me it has had problems for a while now and won't boot anymore. It keeps shooting up a boot disk failure error I am told. I am also told a "now dumping physical memory" message appears at times. There were also some other symptoms mostly pointing to hard drive failure.

Now I know enough to tell the gal right off that it is likely her hard drive is shot. Replacing the Hard Drive is no big deal for me. But I have been trying to recover at least some of her Data. I have done it before from drives that have failed(or at least somewhat failed). However, this little fella is giving me a serious head ache.

I orginally tried to attach it as a slave to my working Hard Drive I put in it. The computer then detects nothing. I have tried multiple settings in her bios as well seeing if her Bios can see them at all. It can't. If I hook it as a slave cd-rom drive, the computer won't detect the hard drive, or the CD-ROM drive. If I leave the drive in alone I can't boot from floppy or CD no matter the boot order or even if the only hardware attached is the floppy, the Hard Drive and her Video(no onboard video). Regardless to say that makes it a bit difficult to do ANYTHING with the drive. And I am not any where near being a data recovery specialist(far far far away from it). Now my question is should I just give up on it(it did not sound like anything real important had been on it, I tried to recover it more out of habit then neccesity) or is there something really silly I overlooked?

I originally tried to use one of those USB External Harddrive things that let you hook an enternal HD up through the USB port. Dad can't find his... and after playing with the HD I don't know if it would really help much anyways.

Edit- I forgot to tell you all this. Yes the jumpers are set right(at least according to the drive and documentation taht I have).

[o_O]

Provided the drive isn't too far gone, putting it in the freezer for about two hours, then hooking it up is a good way to recover some of the data.

[ShunNakamura]

I have never heard of that before. Why exactly does it help? Dad has heard the method, but doesn't know why it helps. And now I am curious :P. Will try once all are asleep.

[crono_logical]

Something about how cooling it like that causes the components inside to shrink ever so slightly allowing something to work again, but I don't remember the exact details

To me, it sounds like the circuitry on the drive's fried

[ShunNakamura]

Something about how cooling it like that causes the components inside to shrink ever so slightly allowing something to work again, but I don't remember the exact details

To me, it sounds like the circuitry on the drive's fried

Guess I'll have to google the exact details :P.

And if the circuitry is fried I am going out on a limb and saying that there is likely little chance of me recovering the data.

Oh well.. I don't think she had anything too important on it. She didn't sound upset when I first told her it was dead/dying and would need replaced. She was only worried about the cost of the replacement drive due to the fact stores around here(unless you drive about 30 or so miles) like to charge 50-80$ for a simple 30-40GB Hard Drive. Highway robbery if you ask me.

[crono_logical]

If the circuitry's gone, you can still recover the data by getting an identical drive and swapping them - the circuitry's seperate from the physical disk inside after all

Tell her to buy online or you buy online for her, much cheaper

[ShunNakamura]

Buying online is troublesome due to my disbelieve in credit cards and thier ilk. And anyway drive thirty miles to office max and you can get a 100GB for 80-90$ and a 200 for like 120$-140$ or something like that. Not too bad.

And I really don't want to fool around with the circutry(even if it is just swapping boards... I would likely screw something up) ... plus it is an anceint hard drive that she has.. so finding an identical one would be a miracle.

Currently she will get to keep an 16 GB or thereabouts drive from me.

edit- and freezing it didn't work. Guess it is time to set up the 16 GB for her.