[e-rased]

I restarted my pc the other day....when I started it back up, it said "INSERT SYSTEM DISK". So naturally I took the case off, and looked at the hard drives. I have two hard drives, my primary, OS hard drive and my storage drive.

My primary drive won't take power. It's not the power cable, I plugged the storage drive in and it worked fine on the same cable.

The hard dive doesn't spin, at all. Any ideas, or am I at a total lost without sending it to a DC?

[Dngrsone]

A DC? If the drive doesn't spin up, then it's likely a lost cause. Go to the manufacturer's website, type in the serial number of the drive and see if it is still under warranty-- you may qualify for a replacement drive with little or no money spent.

[e-rased]

I'm not worried about the hard drive, I have others...I just want the data. + The warranty is no longer good so I guess I'm screwed.

[aitken325i]

I doubt very much you will get the data back without sending the drive to a specialist, which would probably end up costing you a lot of money.

There is data recovery software available, but how effective it would be in your case I'm not too sure.

[e-rased]

I was kinda expecting that Thanks for the confirmation. All the software I've found needs to have power in the hard drive to retrieve it so I'm outta luck.

Thanks.

[megumi amatuka]

(Oo;?(Does that mean BIOS can't recognize it? Fdisk can't see it?)

If so. Try to get same type of the drive. That may be any junk. If it says bad cluster on it, it's still better. Then replace the controller board. A little thing to lose.

[Dictionary]

Yeah, as someone mentioned it before, it might be hard for you to do this alone. It might even require opening the whole HDD...

[e-rased]

I wouldn't know where to begin, I'm a nub when it comes to hardware. But hey! Nothing to lose I guess, wouldn't hurt to try =D Thanks

[tj_nt]

As megumi amatuka pointed out...one of the cheapest options is to find a sister drive (same make, model,series,) and use the controller (electronics) card off a second drive...I have done this on several occasions to salvage data...sometimes even though a new card enables the drive to spin up the data possibly got destroyed when the original card bites the dust...

e-bay may be a source for a used sister drive... $30-$50 compared to $400 and up for data recovery experts...

[megumi amatuka]

(Oo;?(Check the board carefully first.)

Sometimes or often chpsets or chip capasitor will be toasted and broken. As a result of which it becomes suddenly unrecognized naturally, since power can't reach it. Even if there's no such a trace, something can happen to them internally. If it is the case, it will come back from grave when you replace it.

It is software who uses hardware in the end, you know there's disk drives and also harddisk controller in device manager. (Oo;?(Probably it would be that? I don't know well, though. )

[Profftnt]

Changing the board is not a bad idea, as you have "already lost" the data.....