HDD failure-friend is going to kill me

[Stevie_G_8]

I have an old Dell pc that a friend of the family brought to me because it was so infected with virus/spyware that it would literally do nothing. The only thing she wanted was the pics off of it. I tried burning them to CD's, but the machine would just sit there. I tried booting into Safe Mode, and would get a blue screen OD error. I then tried to put the drive in a 2nd machine as a slave, and this is where the real problems started. When I tried to explore the drive, it asked me if I wanted to format, like there was nothing on it.

Now, when I put the drive back in the original machine, it isn't recognized. The machine beeps and I can hear a clicking in the hard drive. I have a new hard drive for her but I wanted to get the pictures off of the old one.

I have tried to go in with an Ubuntu CD, but I get multiple errors when trying to read the drive. It shows a gradually increasing number with an errror as it tries to read it. I will have to look this evening to get the specific error codes.

Is there any way to get the information off of the old disk? It is a Seagate model, I will have to get the exact model this evening. Am I screwed?

[not important]

If you continued with the format....the data is gone.

[Force Flow]

Well, you can try ontrack data recovery: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/data-recovery-downloads/

But at this point with failing sectors and with the HDD noise, it's extremely doubtful (and likely to cause even more damage with an attempt). This usually indicates mechanical failure, and there's really nothing you can do without highly specialized equipment and a clean room. You can have the drive sent to ontrack for a recovery, but that's pricey...usually $500-$1200 per drive.

[Stevie_G_8]

I did not continue with the format, but I have no idea why all of the data was just suddenly gone. And then, not only was the data gone but the drive failed completely. Would ESD do that?

Thanks, I was afraid of that. I saw some of those data recovery sites on Google. They are at least an option if she wants the pics badly enough.

[glc]

There are 2 kinds of computer users - those who have had a hard drive failure, and those who are GOING to have a hard drive failure. Smart users always have backups of irreplaceable files.

It happens. It's nothing you did. The only thing you could have done better is IMMEDIATELY remove the drive and used a USB adapter to recover the files - before the drive completely crashed.