Just had a hard drive crash hard.
Computers going along like normal and I have a file window open to the storage hard drive.  Poof. Files disappear.  Drive starts clicking.  Drive is no longer recognized by the system as existing.
Taking it by a data recovery place tomorrow to get it diagnosed.
I've already taken it out of the system.  But before I did that I tried some free trial data recovery software... HDtune, Getdataback... and they didn't recognize the drive existed either.  So I'm going to have to go to the pros.
Anyone have any recommended places?  I'm planning on taking it to data recovery labs in Miami... as I can drive it to them and not have to mail it in.  So you all know of any place better... and cheaper... in Florida?   I'm all ears.
Oh it's a Seagate Barracuda 3000GB... already have a WD 4TB replacement ordered.





There was no indication of the drive going bad.  it went from normal to gone in zero seconds flat.
 

Try this: Put it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or so. This is an old fix and may not werk on newer stuff but its worth a try.

Seagate doesn't fare well. good luck

Try Spinrite

I just recovered data from my sister's crashed laptop.  Just buy an external drive enclosure and plug it into another computer.


I ran "chkdsk <drive letter>: /F" against it a couple times and was able to recover data from \Users\<userid>\... folders

 

yeah...



1. Clicking indicates hardware fault.  powering it up in too many cycles is just going to exacerbate the problem.

2. My computer is still perfectly functional... I'm posting from it now.  I lost the storage drive not my OS drive or my games drive.  Pluging it into a different computer would accomplish jack all.



As for the fridge idea... I can't think of a single reason why that should help... and I don't want to power it on again.



I just wish I could find a closer place to take it that was trust worthy...

Might not help it at all. But it was a fix used  successfull7 on older HDs. Cooling the unit changed some of the tolerances so that it would run one more time.

Toss it and restore from your backup.


You DO have a backup, right?

Wow.  That's an eye-opener.  I have two Seagate ST3000DM001 drives, the ones with the 43.1% failure rate.  Guess I'll be upgrading my hardware soon.



Thanks for the link.



 

Bearings wear out, and some times freezing the drive tightens it up enough to get some data off.

I have a hard drive that will sometimes do this.  Its external and sometimes the usb mini cable will get a little loose or something.  If I unplug it it works fine though.  So its possible it might still work, but don't count on it.  Sometimes drives just fail.  Backup important shit "to the cloud" like with mega.co.nz or discs or another hd that doesnt get used often.

Side note:  Anyone know a good place that I can buy a used, fully functional hd?  I'm OK with buying used, I just need somewhere to offset files that aren't necessarily irreplacable but are taking up space.