My Maxtor 120gig Hard Drive Just Died

[Mainter]

My Maxtor 120gig Hard Drive just died the other day, It cannot be detected in Bios and when its powered up it gives an 8 or 9 tone beep code.

[TheTerrorist_75]

What Bios do you have? What motherboard?

AMI Bios

8 beeps = memory error video adapter

9 beeps = faulty Bios chip

Edited March 8, 2006 by TheTerrorist_75

[Mainter]

yes ami bios how come the harddrive does not show up in the bios?

[TheTerrorist_75]

yes ami bios how come the harddrive does not show up in the bios?

Do you have another computer to test it on? If it works on a different system your Bios chip may be bad. You haven't tried to flash the Bios lately have you?

[Mainter]

The beep decoder I read basicly said this; Its screwed, try detect it in Bios, if it cant be detected there then its really screwed.

It also says the HD itself has no speakers so it cant be the thing beeping, but every thing else I have plugged it into makes the exact same tones.

Yeah I have checked cables, and tried it on various computers.

no i have not flashed the bios

Edited March 8, 2006 by Mainter

[TheTerrorist_75]

Try slaving it to another setup and see if you can retrieve any files from it. If you have a Knoppix Live CD you may be able to see the drive and save any fies that way.

[Mainter]

alright i will try it

thanks for the help

[martymas]

the beeps come from the compts

inboard speakers

will it not auto detect the hdd?

can you see the drive in my compt?

can the drive be detected in

compt mangement -disk management

on the right will be these drives

if the drives arnt visable

go to view on the toolbar- top-disk list

and it will show all the drives

detected on your compt

marty

[irregularjoe]

My Maxtor 120gig Hard Drive just died the other day, It cannot be detected in Bios and when its powered up it gives an 8 or 9 tone beep code.

Have you tried Powermax?

It helped me out a few times.

Joe

[Mainter]

i used SpinRite 6.0 and it will not find the drive so it cannot test it the only thing i can think of is to buy the excact same harddrive model number and all and swap disk platters cause i do not want to spend a bunch of money for some data recovery tech when i can just spend 50 and do it that way thanks for all your suggestions everyone

[Chappy]

i used SpinRite 6.0 and it will not find the drive so it cannot test it the only thing i can think of is to buy the excact same harddrive model number and all and swap disk platters cause i do not want to spend a bunch of money for some data recovery tech when i can just spend 50 and do it that way thanks for all your suggestions everyone

Uhhh....you're not contemplating removing the platters from this drive and putting them into another drive enclosure are you????

If so, don't waste your time as this will NOT work for you, you'll only end up with TWO dead drives if you try this. The gap tolerance of the read/write heads and the platters, is less than the thickness of a particle of cigarette smoke, so any contaminants that get into the drive enclosure while you try this, will cause the heads to crash the platters and then they're all toast for sure. This has to be done in special "Clean Rooms" to ensure that even the smallest particle of dust doesn't get in there, because that single particle that DOES get by can destroy the platters.

Also, if it's the heads that are bad and you need to install the new head system onto old platters, the slightest touch of the heads to the platters will cause microscopic debris to be left on the platters and the heads will quickly crash them and make it worse. Remember that the gap is less than a human hair, so touching the platters is almost impossible to avoid if you tried this.

So put this one right out of your head unless you wish to find out how much money you can waste buying new HDD's every few weeks.

Is your drive still spinning up?

Have you tried slaving it to another system yet?

Have you tried using Knoppix to read it yet?

[xxkbxx]

i used SpinRite 6.0 and it will not find the drive so it cannot test it the only thing i can think of is to buy the excact same harddrive model number and all and swap disk platters cause i do not want to spend a bunch of money for some data recovery tech when i can just spend 50 and do it that way thanks for all your suggestions everyone

This has to be done in special "Clean Rooms" to ensure that even the smallest particle of dust doesn't get in there, because that single particle that DOES get by can destroy the platters.

So you don't mean my bedroom? I'm sure my room definitly doesn't have dust in it </sarcasm>

[shanenin]

I have never taken a harddrive apart(yet). You may have luck swapping out some of the peices that are not sealed in(assumbing there are some).

My next harddrive that dies is coming apart :-)

[bozodog]

Hey my friend, you can always give it one last try with this:

Put the drive into an airtight bag, like a Ziploc bag, or wrap it TIGHTLY in plastic wrap or a garbage bag, THEN wrap the entire thing in a medium-size towel, and place it in your freezer for 20 minutes.

The idea is that you want to see if deep-cooling it QUICKLY will allow it to run one more time. You do NOT want to FREEZE it, because as it THAWS, you'll have condensation INSIDE the drive, and the water will probably cause many problems, so do NOT leave it in the freezer for more than 30 minutes at MOST.

I actually tried this trick with a friend; his drive died, and we could NOT get it to work, even after leaving it in the freezer for 30 minutes, BUT, he later told me that he DID have success doing the same thing while visiting family members who were having problems with their system.

If it works, you'll get one last BRIEF chance to retrieve some data; if it doesn't work, you'll be no worse off than you are right now.

From Southernlady at SouthernGazebo

Edited March 10, 2006 by bozodog

[Mainter]

no the drive never grinded or anything like that before the drive so there is no point of doing the freezer thing i have did it before with a friends and it worked perfect got all the data off and to a external hard drive