PC HDD Failing - how best to recover?

[tvrforever]

Ok so it's been a bit of a bad day

The 130GB Maxtor ATA drive I've had for 3 years in the PC has failed to work in DMA mode (only PIO 4) (believe due to PC case fan failing and drive overheating).

Luckily I had a spare unused 300GB ATA so I've removed the 'failing' drive and have spent the last 4hrs doing a clean XP Pro install and repath etc.

Now I've got the 'failing' drive with some data on it I'd like to recover if possible, so...

I'm concerned that if I add it back as the slave to the new master 300GB drive it will reduce the IDE interface channel down to PIO Mode 4 again (and resetting to DMA appears to be an arcane nightmare!)

I'm thinking I should disconnect the CD/RW & DVD drives and add the 'failing' drive on the second IDE channel and see how that works? (hopefully still booting on the 300GB drive and hopefully leaving the 300GB drive using UDMA mode 6).

Any of the more PC technical (I only do very big systems nowadays so rusty as hell on PCs) bods around got any thoughts or comments?

Needless to say I'm getting a new fan ASAP in the morning!

Cheers

Ian

[aldi]

Theres a glitch on some mobo's (sis chipset?) that causes the PIO thing, theres a reg. fix for it on the MS site... here we go: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/81747

That might help with the PIO thing (or might not

[Pigeon]

tvrforever said:

I'm concerned that if I add it back as the slave to the new master 300GB drive it will reduce the IDE interface channel down to PIO Mode 4 again (and resetting to DMA appears to be an arcane nightmare!)

More than likely, and it might bugger up the new drive if it starts to fail worse...

tvrforever said:

I'm thinking I should disconnect the CD/RW & DVD drives and add the 'failing' drive on the second IDE channel and see how that works? (hopefully still booting on the 300GB drive and hopefully leaving the 300GB drive using UDMA mode 6).

That's what I'd do.

[ErnestM]

Slap the failing drive into a USB or firewire external enclosure. Boot to your new 300gb drive as per normal. Plug in the external enclosure with failing drive. Robert's your father's brother...


ErnestM

[tvrforever]

Pigeon said:

tvrforever said: I'm thinking I should disconnect the CD/RW & DVD drives and add the 'failing' drive on the second IDE channel and see how that works? (hopefully still booting on the 300GB drive and hopefully leaving the 300GB drive using UDMA mode 6). That's what I'd do.

agree, so I've tried that this morning and the PC simply refuses to boot past BIOS no matter how I connect the failing drive (drive using a brand new UltraATA cable with both the master & slave connectors...

Stumped

[pjskel]

USB/Firewire case - £20 ish.
Certainly cheaper than a Professional Recovery Service.
Although, that said, the drive's failing could be (and sounds most likely to be) parked heads or failing to spin up.

[roadsweeper]

ErnestM said:

Slap the failing drive into a USB or firewire external enclosure. Boot to your new 300gb drive as per normal. Plug in the external enclosure with failing drive. Robert's your father's brother... ErnestM

This is worth a crack if all else fails, but connecting directly is usually the best way. I have just receovered 300GB of data off a Maxtor HDD, but I plugged it into the motherboard as usual.

For future reference, don't both with Maxtor - they're shit. Seagate (who've actually just bought Maxtor I believe) are a much better bet with their 5yr warranty IMO.

[tvrforever]

Well long story short - couldn't get the failing drive to work at all in the PC so went to PCWorld first thing and got a "SPEEZE - GIGAPOD External USB enclosure" for £25.

Connected the drive into it as a master drive, connected it via USB to the PC and have so far been able to copy the data off it (using RoboCopy).

Works wonders even with an NTFS drive, only bit was where I had to take over the permissions of the "documents & settings" NTFS folder as the new XP build's signature is different.

USB rocks for recovery

[thepassenger]

It might help but freeze the drive.

Air tight zip lock baggie, squezze all the air out of it and shove it in the freezer for a few hours. Might help get the data off.