Failed Hard Drive questions

[MainLax28]

Hey, yesterday, the hard drive on my 6 month old computer failed. My dad talked to gateway about getting us a new one under the warranty. They are going to send us one, but we have to send the old one back. There are a ton of files on the old one, and many pictures and songs, so I was wondering if I'd be able to retrieve the old files in any way. Also, those files are my family's intellectual possessions, so legally we should not have to give them to Gateway correct?

The other question I had was that my computer has a dual hard drive, and seems the one that failed is the one the boots up the computer, and runs the programs. I am pretty sure that is actually aprocessor driver, but they said it was the hard drive. Usually I can get this stuff sorted out myself, but this could be a real pain in the ***, especially because we have to install it ourselves. If someone could share their opinions, that would be great.

[FallIntoIt]

Ah, dude, that blows. The most heartbreaking sound I'd ever heard was the disks in my old laptop's harddrive clicking against each other before it failed.

Anyway, after your harddrive failed, no, you can't get anything off of it. That's why if you suspect your hdd is going to fail, you immediately begin backing stuff up.

[anjang86]

It could still be saved though. This just happened to my dad recently and he got a new one under warranty from Dell. Just put the old harddrive into your computer (after the new one is set up) and set it up as a "slave drive" under your "master drive" (your new one). Once you do this then you can go into my computer and go underneath your old harddrive and salvage what might be there.

Of course, if it is a harddrive failure then nothing might be able to be recovered.

[SullyLax]

It could still be saved though. This just happened to my dad recently and he got a new one under warranty from Dell. Just put the old harddrive into your computer (after the new one is set up) and set it up as a "slave drive" under your "master drive" (your new one). Once you do this then you can go into my computer and go underneath your old harddrive and salvage what might be there.

Of course, if it is a harddrive failure then nothing might be able to be recovered.

There is also the possibility of using the freezer trick where you put the drive in your freezer in a ziplock bag for like 10 minutes or something, and then pop it into your computer, if it boots, back up all your stuff onto the other drive and then cds/dvds, because your drive will likely fail in a short period of time.

*I am not responsible if you jack something up trying to save your stuff.

[MainLax28]

Thanks for the replies. Hopefully I won't lose everything, or else, I'll have to redo pretty much every file I put on there. From now on, I will probably be backing up my files better. I also will try that freezer trick. Seems like it could work. Please keep the help coming too.,

[JoshM]

You've got to backup your files. I've got 2-4 backups of everything right now. The most important stuff(emails, passwords, etc.) I have on CDs, flash drives, and my external hard drive. Music I have on two hard drives. You get the idea.

[MainLax28]

Yeah, I did that on my old one, but since this one is so new, I didn't get around to doing it.

[twin58]

Funny you should mention that. While cleaning out files yesterday, I came across a .pdf file called "200 ways to revive a hard drive," from an outfit called
http://www.techrepublic.com . Putting it in the freezer is one of the ways. You have to register to access the site. The .pdf file is 552KB big. I can send it if needed, I guess.

Wait - try this:

200 ways to revive a hard drive (http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/downloads/200ways.pdf)

and Google for 200 ways to revive a hard drive (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=200+ways+to+revive+a+hard+drive&btnG=Google+Search)

[OldGoalie]

There are also companies that can retrieve stuff from the hard drive even after it has completely failed:

http://www.adrdatarecovery.com/
http://www.drivesolutions.com/datarecovery/index.shtml
http://www.drivesavers.com/index4.html

Some are a little pricey, but they can get your stuff back...

[MainLax28]

Thanks alot. I got the new drive today, but I am going to experiment when I get the time. I am going to try all of the things posted above. Thanks guys