You can either try the Recover It All software, or I can remote in to your computer and try to fix the problem.

It could be that whatever locked up the PC is what is causing it not to boot. From a data recovery stand point that could be bad sectors. From a stand point that could be anything from a virus to a bad windows update. Can you access the drive if you slave it to another PC?

As this site states, that ‘kerlunk… kerlunk’ ‘CLICK OF DEATH’ sound is not necessarily physical ‘head’ damage. It may also be simply a transistor or chip going out on the green circuit board that is part of the hard drive. I had the same problem (kerlunk…kerlunk…kerlunk – computer not recognizing WD400 hard drive). The freezer trick wouldn’t work, and numerous inquiries to ‘data recovery’ specialists quoted me anywhere from $1800 to $2400 (US) to recover the data. Swallowing hard, I figured the digital photos still on the hard drive (yeah, I know it was stoooopid for not backing up the last couple years of data) were worth saving up to get them recovered. But I sure didn’t have the bucks on hand to do it immediately, and from what I could tell none of the ‘data recovery’ experts could say with certainty that they could recover anything.

I started searched high and wide on the internet and eventually found the same hard drive on eBay. It had the same MDL number, same DCM number, and same number printed on the circuit board! It was like a needle in the haystack from the number of close but not exact hard drives I saw on numerous other sites. IT IS POSSIBLE TO FIND AN EXACT MATCH! I bought the hard drive immediately for $55 (US – shipping included), and when I received it 4 days later I undid the 4 torx screws on my defunct HD’s circuit board and switched it with the circuit board from the HD I just purchased off eBay. 4 torx screws later, popping the drive in an external HD enclosure, powering up and plugging the USB into a laptop and WAH-LAH!! My hard drive was working again and I IMMEDIATELY backed up all my digital photographs to the laptop.

Not saying that this is the norm – I don’t know, all I know is it saved me at least $1,745 and a LOT of stress. I can’t remember yelling as loud or celebrating as loudly as I did when that HD spun up and showed up on Windows Explorer. I was celebrating like I had won the mega-lottery when that WD hard drive spun up and was recognized….. Hopefully this works for somebody else someday. I’ve learned my BACKUP lesson well and thankfully it didn’t cost me upwards of $2000 US to learn it.

My son’s computer crashed/froze so he did a hard reset i.e powered off without shutting down through windows vista. Now hard drive is not recognized in the BIOS. After POST it displays “Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key” (or something very similar). Is there anyway to save this drive ? It is under a year old.

I have another system with the same model drive , both are SATA , what would you suggest I do next ?

Thanks

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Regards

I called Acer in regards to this matter and they sent out new recovery CD’s, but still the same message appears. Was running Windows Vista.

Please advise as to what the problem maybe.

thank you

Okay, this is how it is done.

1. The board on the good drive is unscrewed from the drive itself but left connected to the drive and this drive is connected to the PC.
2. The computer is booted registering the good drives system area
3. A command is issued either through software, or a PC3000 board to spin down the drive but not to power down.
4. The good drive is disconnected from the board, and the bad drive is connected in its place.
5. A command is sent to the drive to spin up the drive using software or a PC3000 board.

So, you now have a drive mounted with a good system area. The problem with this fix is that the Permanent Defect List, and the Growth, or Hot Defect List are tied to the good drive and not the bad drive. So you have a tendency to get bad sectors. The only way to eliminate the bad sectors is to wipe the system area with software, or a PC3000 board. Then you clone the drive taking all the sectors on the drive that have not been remapped. Finally, you use a piece of software to align the file system and then you can start pulling your data off.

The alignment software only works for FAT32 and comes with the PC3000 board. You can however align it yourself using WinHex, and the file entry table using the FAT as a guide. You can also do it with NTFS but you would have to do it by hand. If you only need a few files then this is a viable alternative, however for many files this is a real headache.

Thank You Kevin