First I want to say hello to everyone. This is my first time posting and I have read a lot of good content on here. I am a PC repair tech of 5 yrs, so I am somewhat new I guess compared to everyone else.

Anyways I went to go repair a computer for my aunt and when I got there the HDD was making an awful clanking noise. Usually I would not be able to recover data from a drive making this much noise. We would run GetDataBack from RunTime were I used to work and if that didn't get it then that was it, no more options. But I'm not satisfied with that so I have recently been reading A LOT about data recovery and watching videos from Scott A. Moulton on youtube.

So here's what I did when I got the drive. I plugged it in to my main PC as a slave drive to see if I could run GetDataBack but it was making the noise like I said and it was not recognized in the BIOS. Now, before watching Scott A. Moulton videos I remember hearing about people freezing their HDD and it works in some certain cases. So I gave it a shot. I froze it for almost 37hrs and tried using GetDataBack on an UBCDwin and I had problems copying over to the main HDD since it was linux and I am new to Linux. SO I thought I would take a shot and boot straight to the defected HDD and it worked like a charm. I got her data off and the drive never really made any unusual noise.

This has really sparked my interest and I am curious what some theories are of how this worked out. I have recovered data off of several bad HDD's and have payed attention to the sounds they have made and this HDD was one of the worst. It wouldn't spin up click, click, click then power down. It wasn't a steady click or what sounds like platters hitting. It sounded like the arm was all over the place and making a scratching noise.

Any theories? Also any good books that you all recommend to help me learn more about repairing HDD and data recovery?

Thanks in advance!

No comment.

Try to freeze for more hours than the previous one!
Maybe until better world comes....

Agree with BlackSt: Period.

For RonRiggsJr:
results-the-yourself-solutions-t11912.html?hilit=results

Janos

IDK maybe freezing the drive is stupid and only the drive coincidentally started to work again. All I was doing was experimenting to find out what works and what dont. Trial and error. The data was not even worth $100 to recover, so tell me why cant a newbie experiment. I have about 20 HDD here that I can experiment with that I have collected over the years, sitting here useless. I just want to learn something new.

What made you more capable of doing this than me when you first wanted to do this?

Just saying!

you will need more years more than the years you collected your drives

to learn.


good luck