From: STeve Andre' (andres_at_msu.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 06 2000 - 18:23:24 EDT
While it couldn't hurt to try the this, I don't think it will do any
good. This
sort of a recovery system sounds for occasions when the filesystem gets
corrupted, and you have to deal with that.
What rob's problem is, is premature and sudden disk death. I have something
that I have used twice in the past which has worked on such disks. I of course
have absolutely no faith that this will work for you, and its possible that
you
might hurt the disk more (so if you're thinking about sending it to a data
recovery place, you might not want to try this), so always remember that these
things aren't for the faint of heart, etc.
My trick is to take the disk, wrap it in a paper towel, and stick it in the
freezer
for about 15 minutes. The paper towel is to help keep moisture off it.
After the 15 minutes, take it out, stick it in the machine and boot. If on the
highly unlikely chance does boot, >> COPY THE NEEDED IMPORTANT
FILES TO FLOPPY AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN <<.
This has worked for me twice: once with a big ide disk, and once on a little
laptop 2.5inch unit.
If perchance you manage to get any data off this and it seems to have come
back to life, treat this disk as if it were radioactive sludge and do not do
any more with it. To me there is nothing more scary than a hard disk which
died, but then comes back to life. Ick!
I don't think this will work for you, but if you can't get it to work this is
worth a shot. As near as I can determine after reading about IDE production
methods, sometimes (very rarely) things like the arm actuators get stuck
because they moved too far, and making them cold shrinks them some
number of angstroms, such that they can come back to life. I talked to an
IBM disk engineer once about this and his first reaction was to shriek in
horror, but did admit that this was a possible fix in some VERY small
number of cases.
Anyway, if this crazy trick works, let us know.
--STeve Andre'
At 04:58 PM 10/6/00 -0500, Greg Langham wrote:
>Rob,
>
>The only piece of immediate help I can think of is the possible use of the
>"Recovery Console" in Windows 2000.
>
>For specifics, see the following MS knowledge base article:
><http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q229/7/16.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0>http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q229/7/16.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0
>
>
>To summarize what it says, you boot from the W2K CD to a command prompt
>that can access NTFS, FAT, and FAT32 partitions.
>
>To start the Recovery Console, boot from the W2K CD. At the "Welcome to
>Setup" screen, press F10, or press R to Repair, then C to start the
>Recovery Console.
>
>The nice thing about it is that all of the available commands are built
>into the interpreter, so nothing on your hard disk is required for operation.
>
>What I have done in the past is use the recovery console to "get alive",
>then go pick the files I want to copy and hope that the drive will
>cooperate long enough to let me copy the files I need to a floppy.
>
>Hope this helps,
>Greg
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rob Bell [<mailto:rbell1_at_netscape.net>mailto:rbell1_at_netscape.net]
>Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 4:22 PM
>To: ThinkPad Mailing List
>Subject: 600X HD Gone South
>
>Help!
>
>The hard drive (Hitachi 12GB) on my 600X seems to have gone south. The
>laptop
>was sitting on my desk purring along all day (not really being used), and
>when
>I went to shut it down it made a strange chit-chit-chit noise each time it
>tried to access the drive. Of course, every app crashed and the system
>finally crashed too. When I try to boot I can get a little ways into the
>Windows 2000 boot process (the first black screen with the white bar at the
>bottom), then Win2K craps out with an error that it can't access a file
>(different every time). There is no BIOS test option to run any diagnostics.
>
>I called IBM support and they would be willing to ship a replacement if they
>had one, but they're on backorder. I'm not really so concerned about getting
>my system back up and running quickly (it's my secondary), but I certainly
>need some files off the drive. My latest backup is about 3 weeks old, so
>I've
>got a bunch of things, but there's always those last few documents and
>e-mails
>that I still need. Anyone have ideas to help me access the drive??
>
>I believe I can install it in the UltraBay of my old 770 which I thankfully
>haven't given back to my company yet. With the way the disk acted though, I
>don't think I'll be able to read any files long enough to copy them off.
>
>Bah! Had a 770 for almost three years with NO PROBLEMS and now I've had the
>600X for a month and it dies! ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!
>
>Thanks for any ideas...
>Rob
>
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