Problem with a hard drive

[raquel]

I have tried everything and cannot access my hard drive.

Background is that the problem drive is my D drive (second hard drive). A noise had been emmitting from the sytem for about a week that sounded like a faulty fan. One day we turned on the computer and had trouble accessing files (they can be accessed but take 5 -10 mins to open). OK, we thought, the noise must have been a faulty fan, or a very dusty one, so we pulled our system apart and cleaned/checked the fans...all OK. We started eliminating things by disconecting them to discover what the error was. Once the d drive is disconected the system runs perfectly.

My next step was to try and discover what was wrong with the harddrive. I have run all types of scans(scandisk - all modes, and defrag etc) but all produce error messages, telling me that there is a system error or the drive is locked and therefore cannot perform scan. When you try to accesss the d drive itself the message reads "D:\ is not accessible. A device attached to the system is not functioning". I have checked the CMOs and Bios settings and all seem fine. When you connect/disconnect the drive the computer registers this and acts appropritely, and when you look at the sytem settings it states that the device is working properly.I have also checked the drive by starting up the system and listening to it and feeling for the vibrations. It is not making any unusal sounds at this point and the vibrations and clicking in can be felt/heard.

Do you have any suggestions before I take it to the profs to have my data removed?
Thanks

[glc]

Nope - that drive is toast. Data recovery time - and hold on to your wallet. You can try Ontrack Easy Recovery or Powerquest Lost and Found, you might get lucky.

[Hpro]

Try to boot to DOS prompt - type FDISK and if it comes up with something similar like - CAN'T ACCESS THIS OR THAT DRIVE then just do as GLC told you.. The same goes if there isn't any partition found on it..