[memento]

I have a hard drive that has suddenly stopped working. The data on it is not critical, but I'd like to retrieve it (so no talk about making backups, I do that with important stuff like my photos etc).

If I hook it up to my Mac Pro 2nd optical spot, it won't spin up. If I plug it into a verified external FW enclosure it won't spin up either. At least with the external, I can see the status light. It is the same color that I see when I use a working drive in it and that drive is spinning up from sleeping. If I listen to the drive, it never starts to spin and I can't see it using disk utility or system profiler.

Any suggestions to wake this drive?

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

It sounds like its dead. You may want to get a new one...

[Calli46]

I've read elsewhere on the web of a trick that I would try on a bad drive (read : not spinning). Get the drive out of the computer and put it in a freezer for a night. Next morning, take it out the freezer and, without waiting, give it a try in your computer. If it starts up spinning and mounts on the desktop, copy everything you can from it, then dump it forever!

Good luck!

[memento]

that's interesting! freeze it? It must have to do with parts shrinking when cold, maybe freeing up something that's bound. Heck, it's worth a try!

[memento]

Freezing it didn't help. I'll hold on to it for a little while longer and keep looking for something that will work.

[minimalistmatt]

I've just had this nightmare with my external FW drive.

Not recognised on Disc Utility or Finder. Not spinning up, and no sign of life.

With it being in a Firewire enclosure I just kept switching it off and on rapidly about 100 times, then I shook it around and gave it a few knocks (probably not recommended) just incase a connector was loose, and then I retried turning it off and on quickly again about another 100 times.

I was planning on the Freezer trick having given up all hope (noting that it didn't work for you though) when, having left it alone for 10 minutes I flicked it on and started up. I ran disk utility on it and Drive 10 which show no problems with it ! I have lost faith though and am getting a another one. (I already have 2 so if this was dead I would still be okay)

Don't give up - sometimes there's hope.

[Sherman Homan]

I have had success with this:
(Warning, have it set up to immediately pull the data off!)
Hit it, hard. Not smash it, hit it, enough to free the read/write head. Turn it on, recover your data, throw it away.
Prayer, burnt chicken bones, garlic all help too.

[kick52]

Originally Posted by Calli46 

I've read elsewhere on the web of a trick that I would try on a bad drive (read : not spinning). Get the drive out of the computer and put it in a freezer for a night. Next morning, take it out the freezer and, without waiting, give it a try in your computer. If it starts up spinning and mounts on the desktop, copy everything you can from it, then dump it forever!

Good luck!

that seems weird..

wouldnt there be a danger of some ice melting and shorting your logic board?

[memento]

So I was able to swap it's logic board with another one from a nearly identical drive. It can spin up, but all I get from the finder is that it is unreadable and the option to reformat, ignore, or eject (it's in an external firewire enclosure now). I ran system profiler and saw that it was recognized as disk5 so I ran fsck and got the following:

Code:
 fsck /dev/disk5
** /dev/rdisk5

CANNOT READ: BLK 16
CONTINUE? [yn] y

THE FOLLOWING DISK SECTORS COULD NOT BE READ: 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
Floating point exception

Any suggestions at this point?