Help, Hard drive has died.....

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Simon A

Gizmo,
Sata, IDE and ATA are types of Hard disk interface, your home one will be either IDE (the same thing as ATA) or SATA. IDE will use a 40 pin ribbon cable, sata will use a much narrower cable about 1/2 inch wide. If in doubt tell us the model No. off the top of the dead disk and we can tell you.
Do you want a copy of SP2, so you can SP2 the machine before connecting it to the web? If so, I can burn the service pack to CD and drop it off at your work on Monday.
HTH
Simon A

That would be useful mate, I think it is IDE, as it does have a large (about 2 inch) ribbon cable, looks like 40 pin.
It will help that I get the right replacement!!!

Mark

[Gizmo]

Many thanks, it looks like a plan is formulating...

thanks for all the suggestions and links...

Much appreciated, YD comes good again...

[Bantam]

Dur - even easier suggestion.

First off, go to PC World and buy yourself a fairly chunky IDE HDD. 300Gb or more will probably do fine.

Then go to your local Tesco's - my local Tesco Extra have Philips external 250Gb USB2 Hard Drives at £130 at the moment.

When you get it home, open the screws at the back and slide the tray out. I have one here on my desk I've done to make sure it's IDE and it sure is.

Replace the 250Gb disk you get inside with the knackered one, and copy the data back on as above. Then return the 250Gb disk back into the caddy and back up!

Mark.

[EdHornby]

even cheaper method - borrow someone elses windows XP pc

slot the disk in, XP will probably start the disk repair/scandisk on the dodgy one and just may repair the files all by itself...

then back it up

[Gizmo]

all fixed, slowly rebuilding all the applications we had on the pc, but the files and folders are intact, hurrah......

Thanks for all your help

much appreciated

Mark

[milldog]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

It looks like the hard drive has gone on our home PC and I would like to try and recover what I can from it,
has anyone had any experience with or recommend anyone or service that can read the hard drive and pull some of the files back etc.

i have an program that recovers most hard drives and then i can save them to disc or what ever send it to me.

PM me if you need details,

you could ask Brian at aquanauts we recovered his HD