HDD recovery

[Holst]

Hi all.

I recently had my IBM 75xgp 45gb die on me.

As soon as a realised something was wrong I managed to backup a little bit of stuff before Explorer.exe got corrupt and windows failed.

So ive got myself a new 80gb maxtor.

If I try to plug the IBM back into my system and read it using the OS on the maxtor I get a blue screen "inaccessable boot device" as the IBM drive is messed up.

Is there another way to recover some of my data ?

There isnt allot that I will miss, mostly pictures and a few documents.

Its formatted as NTFS, using Win2k PRO.

[mookydooky]

Are you sure your booting from the Maxtor? The "Inaccessible Boot Device" message usually shows up when the disk you're trying to boot from is messed up. Check the boot order in the BIOS if you get a chance.

[Holst]

I ran some IBM disk utility and it "fixed" about 30 bad sectors.

This allowed me to boot and get the info copied over.

I think ill write zero's to the drive and reformat it and see if it can still be used.

[mookydooky]

I have 3 of the IBM 45G drives. I guess I've been lucky to the extent that I have yet to have a problem with any of them. That's wrong, I did have a problem with one, but it was my fault. I broke one of the pins on the IDE connector. I stuck some wire into the IDE cable and it worked after that. I keep hearing these bad things about IBM and I've completely stopped buying them. I hope you won't have any more problems with it but just to be on the safe side, perhaps you may want to run it at ATA66?

[Holst]

Now ive got this maxtor 80gb im not sure what to do with it.

I dont need more than 95gb of storge, let almone 140gb...

[mookydooky]

Originally posted by Holst
Now ive got this maxtor 80gb im not sure what to do with it.

I dont need more than 95gb of storge, let almone 140gb...

Don't worry Holst, I'm sure you'll come up with some use for it. HD space is like money, you can never have enough.

[cloasters]

Originally posted by Holst
I ran some IBM disk utility and it "fixed" about 30 bad sectors.

This allowed me to boot and get the info copied over.

I think ill write zero's to the drive and reformat it and see if it can still be used.

I'm glad that you got the data off of the drive, Holst! You can write all zero's to the drive.
Chances are real good that this problem will reappear. If this happens again, connect the drive to your Secondary IDE channel to pull the data that's undamaged off of it. I made my 45 Gb 75GXP Secondary Master temporarily.

I suggest not putting any critical data onto the drive. Maybe your 75GXP will straighten up and fly right after a fresh start. Many thousands of them had embarassingly short useful lives. Not that IBM is embarrassed about them. Corporate stonewalling works often enough. Not well enough for me to consider buying another HDD from them.

And then a hundred thousand or more Fujitsu HDD's go bad. I hope they had the sense to go over the designs they bought from Big Blue very carefully. Maybe they didn't?

[Holst]

I think what ill do is that ill use it for something that will work it hard (to try to show up any faults so I can RMA) but I wont keep anything important on there.

Maybee use it to only store games not my OS, that way it will get used but if it dies its not a problem.

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by Holst
Now ive got this maxtor 80gb im not sure what to do with it.

I dont need more than 95gb of storge, let almone 140gb...

Two words:

Porn Archive

[Holst]

Not even Wild_Andy_C has that ammount of porn :O

[Daniel ~]

At lest not in any one counrty!":O}

[mookydooky]

Originally posted by Holst
Not even Wild_Andy_C has that ammount of porn :O

He must be a novice collector...