Hard Drive not responding

[charlieahill]

Hi,

I've just had the number two internal hard drive fail on my computer.

Windows (7) bought up warnings about the likely failure of the hard drive, and after restarting my system, the hard drive appeared in Windows Explorer, however the volume fill level is not present, and when the drive is selected, Windows Explorer stops responidng.

I've tried removing the drive and connecting it to the PC via USB and an adaptor, and I get exactly the same scenario.

The hard drive spins as per usual, so it doesn't seem like a mechanical error. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might have caused this, and how I can fix it? Is there any chance it's due to corrupt data?

 

[BikerEcho]

I don't really know what causes this, but i fix might be to format it.
I suppose you have some data on it that you don't want to lose, yes?
In that case try booting with a Linux live disk and try to transfer the data you need to another harddrive.
After all, it is Windows explore that crashes. Linux does not use Explore. So this may help. It's worth a try.

 

[setishock]

The controller board has had a failure. The spindle motor is getting power but the part that reads/writes has failed. You can RMA it with a note that you want the controller replaced so you get the platters back or if you're sure about your skills, you can find an EXACT replacement and install it yourself.
This is why you do backups. When your OS warns you failure is imminent, you don't ignore it. Time to pop in another drive and move your data to it. Then when the drive you were warned about goes blooey, you haven't lost anything.

I scored 3 500gig WD black drives off newegg for 80 dollars each. I have triple redundancy. Every thing I have on them is too valuable to lose

 

[charlieahill]

Thanks for the replies. I was worried that it might have been the circuit board on the hard drive, however, mounted the drive into a Linux virtual machine, and am able to open the drive completely. First job... update all of my backups.

Thanks for the advice