herekitty

First off, hello! I'm new to the forums (and very, very glad to have found them because everyone here seems so helpful).

So, I've had this Maxtor 280 gig HDD for a little over a year now, and it's worked mostly fine up until I tried to plug it in today. It's formatted with the UNIX file system so that I can access it from both my mac and PC, and aside from taking a bit longer to be recognized by my computers (and making loud noise, for some reason), I've had no adverse side effects.

The first odd thing I noticed was that my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400, new from Christmas, running XP) ran through the whole "new hardware dectected" spiel instead of just giving me that "what would you like to do with these files?" dialogue. The balloon that popped up subsequently read "detected: Maytor!6C310S0!!!!" and I thought, oh no, it's messing with the name...

I couldn't see the drive in Disk Management, but I did find it in Device Manager. I also tried running TestDisk, but while the program ran fine when running tests on my laptop's HDD, it wouldn't go beyond the "Would you like to search for partitions made in Vista? [Y/N]" screen. SeaTools will also not run any drive self-tests, saying "test unavailable."

My drive isn't entirely full, but I don't really have a place to put all my files for a backup, and I really don't want to have to reformat.

Thanks for listening!

TheMatt

Hi, and welcome to TSF!

Unfortunately, I think your drive is dying. If you can manage to get it recognized, I would copy all the most important data off it ASAP.

If it isn't recognized on any computer, you can trr the freezer trick to get data off it. Take the drive and put in a ziplock freezer bag and then put it in the freezer for about 6 hours. Take it out, let it sit for about a half hour and then try it on a computer. It should get you at least 10 minutes to copy important data off it.

herekitty

Man, exactly what I didn't want to hear :( Thanks for the tip about the freezer, though. Looks like I'm off to buy a new drive!

TheMatt

Need help selecting a new one?

herekitty

Actually, I was just about to begin a search for one when my awesome neighbor offered to give me one of his - a brand new 320 gig Seagate FreeAgent.

But I was wondering if there is anything else I should try along the lines of extracting my data before sticking my drive in the freezer. And also, if I were to put it in the freezer, should I take it out of the case?

TheMatt

Take just the drive (unplug it from the computer but don't open up the hard disk chamber, doing so will instantly destroy the disk) and put it in a plastic freezer bag. Put it in the freezer for around 12 hours. Upon taking it out, let it sit for about 30 mins before starting it up and attempting to recover data.

That was nice of your neighbor to give you that drive. Now you have a new one.

herekitty

Yay! The freezer trick worked, and I am currently copying everything over to this new (really, really slick) drive. Thank you so much for the advice!!

I'm rather interested to know why exactly putting the HDD in the freezer works. When I saw condensation on the outside of the case as it thawed, I almost had a heart attack (water? in MY electronics?), but the drive is, obviously functioning. Very interesting.

TheMatt

As you use the hard drive, it heats up, and the metal parts expand. After so much expansion and contraction, eventually the parts like the disk head get expanded and out of their original position. Putting the drive in the freezer forces the mechanical parts back to their original positions where they will temporarily work.

Glad it worked out for you.