Help with a dead hard drive

[sage]

Hi everyone, I've got a client with a dead hard drive. Starting clicking and won't boot. When I hooked it up to my HDD-USB adapter, it does not recognize the hard drive. When I try to go into disk management it actually hour glasses until I unplug the device.

I need to get data off of it, is there anything else I can do or try short of sending it out to DriveSavers?

Thanks in advance

 

[iisjman07]

Clicking is usually an indication of physical drive failure (usually the actuator arm is buggered), I'd send it off ASAP

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I've had very little luck with clickers. On a rare occasion I've been lucky with some good recovery software on bad drives, but from what you are describing its not promising. Some people I'm sure will tell you to freeze the drive. That is something I don't personally mess with due to not being set up the way I'd like to be to keep the drive cool and it may be alot of time and work for nothing. The best thing to do is find out if it is absolutely critical to the customers that they get their data. If so drivesavers or another reputable data recovery company is their best option. If they are looking for the cheapest alternative and don't mind rolling the dice on not getting the data back, then go for it if you don't mind wasting alot of time and maybe not make any money off it.

 

[sage]

Thanks guys this is pretty much what I figured as I've dealt with plenty of dead hard drives but just thought I would post on technibble to see if there was anything else. thanks

 

[arrow_runner]

When I hooked it up to my HDD-USB adapter, it does not recognize the hard drive. When I try to go into disk management it actually hour glasses until I unplug the device.

I would boot from a live linux CD as linux is much more tolerant to failing drives than windows. I personally use system rescue cd and trinity rescue kit.