Ok, here the deal. I have a 2 year old Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 60GB hard drive and it's gone down. Really down. The POST say's the primary hard drive has failed. It won't spin up and if I connect it to an ATA-USB converter I have then it's not detected.

Like the fool I am however I didn't backup any of the data on the hard drive since i got it and thus I've lost everything. Most of it isn't important, about 90% of the drive falls into this, but the other 10% is really needed, and I can't remember what was there even.

So I was wondering if anyone has done the same as me an used a data recovery company to retrieve there data. If so then any advice as to which companys are good and how much they charge would be extremely appreciated. Like I said it is a 60GB hard drive but I only need to recovery about 5GB of it, if that, if that makes a difference. Also it's still under warranty and I'd like to get a replacement drive so the company has to provide a 'proof of service' that Maxtor will accept.

I've really learned my lesson about backing up and I'm going to stop laughing at people that keep 3 copies of they work.

A million thanks to anyone who can help.

Not that this helps really, but I also had a DiamondMax Plus 60GB that failed after about 18 months. It had been starting to make some odd noises before it died, so I picked up a 120 GB WD and copied everthing to it; it died a few days later and I had to get it replaced. Unfortunately I have about 150 GB of stuff, and nowhere to which I can back it up : \

I suppose my question is, was there any warning before your drive failed? Odd noises, error messages, etc?

This may not be much useful cause u are trying to recover 5 GB but try it anyway. Put the harddisk in a freezer and then take it out after 30 minutes or so and rapidly plug it to the pc it should give u some time to transfer your files.

if the drive does not spin up the data is simply lost .... you can only do recovery when you get it to work ... then use a tool like "easyRecovery 6" but in your case the only chance is a recovery service ... some guy who open the HDD but this is VERY VERY Expensive ... so try everything to get it at least working shake it or what so ever ...

and btw when you get a new disk ...sell it and get a SEAGATE barracude 4 or 7200.7 they own ....

Like I said I got the HD about 2 years ago and I had a 20GB HD (Western Digital Protege) as well. About 2 months ago one of the hard drives started to make noises and I assumed it was the 20GB one since it's about 5 years old. I was upgrading my PC (well, buying a new one ) and put the 60GB one in with a new 160GB Maxtor SATA drive. Then about 3 days ago the nosies returned. I ran Norton Disk Doctor on both of them and towards the end of the 60GB HD it told me I need to do a low level format. I tried to back up the data, got a blue screen and then the POST said it had failed.

So the short answer would be, yes, I did get a bit of a warning.

Will putting it in the freezer really help. It just sounds very... dodgy.

I've kind of accepted that I'm not going to be able to do anything with it myself. I've seen a few mesed HDs before and managed to do at least something with them, but this is total messed and I think paying someone is the only option. So if you have any preference as to whom I should use, or if you work in such a lab and can do it for free , that'd help as well.

Yeah, I plan on getting a different make. It's just a shame my new one is a Maxtor, I should have got the Seagate one instead.

Thanks

I've been happy with my DiamondMax's replacement, the WD 120 JB...and let that be a lesson to everyone...if your HD EVER starts making odd noises, replace it IMMEDIATELY!


IIRC what happened with mine (this is > 1 year ago) is that it began taking longer and longer to spin up, coupled with a periodic beep (high pitched, like the classic POST beep) while it wasn't yet spun up. Eventually it would but it was taking a while, like I said longer and longer (this is when I got the new one and copied everything over). Soon it started freezing for long periods of time (within windows) coupled with a short low pitched click/beep. I suspected bad sectors, so one day I ran a full chkdsk on it when I left for school. When I came home it was maybe 30% done (many hours later) so I figured it was shot; there were dozens of bad sector displays. I reset the PC and it ceased to spin up at all, it just kept doing that bad sector noise (click/beep) so I put it back in the Dell where it came from (I had migrated it to a later PC) and called their tech support, they asked me to run a diagnostic from a CD that came with said PC, but by then it wouldn't POST, it just said "Primary Hard Disk failure" just like yours. They cross-shipped me a replacement which came like 2 days later, and that is the 80 GB HD in my specs. Again, moral of the story...odd noises/odd behavior = get the data the hell off that drive ASAP

Unless you send your hard drive to canada, I can do it, hopefully. Seagate drives own