Disaster Strikes!

[Josh]

My hard drive started clicking bad and my computer locked up. Anybody have any hard drives they are looking sell? I need at least 60GB. Also do I have any hope of saving the data on my harddrive? Any programs to recovery data from a bad hard drive that is clicking?

[bigfootedman]

This might sound a little strange, but put your hard drive in something like a plastic zip-lock bag and put it in a freezer for at least a day.  After being in these cold temperatures for a while, sometimes the drives will actually work for a little while when they previously would not.  I have never personally done this, but I've heard plenty of success stories from other people.  Hopefully the drive will work long enough to get any important data (work quickly!).  Other than this, the only other way that I know of that you can get data off of it is to take the drive to some data recovery company, but they can be quite pricey.  Good luck.

[Michael Kennedy]

That has worked for me on many occasions and something else that saved data off my laptop was to hit the harddrive against a block of wood.  Seriously.  To do that hit the bottom of the drive against the word moderately hard while you take great care to keep it level while you do so.  Do that if the freezer doesnt work (and a ziplock bag is essential- dont want it getting frosty/wet).

Also, be sure that if the drive is under warranty that you send it in to Maxtor/WD/etc afterwards.  I don't know how many people I know who don't take advantage of the warranty of those drives.  :)

Good luck, and yeah, do work quickly if it works.  May sure you have another drive handy to backup your data before you do anything.