So, what do you do when your hard drive crashes? Call someone who might be able to help! My dad suffered a hard drive crash a couple of weeks ago - just before Gnomedex. Originally, we weren’t sure what happened. I had him get in touch with Charles, a local computer wiz (who diagnosed the problem). From there, we moved on to a higher power - Ken Colburn from the Data Doctors. He handed us to Clayton Moline, his Director of Operations. They received the dead drive, gave ‘er a spin (so to speak), and came back with a depressing data diagnosis:

I’m sorry to report that the hard drive to be recovered has suffered significant mechanical failure, rendering the data on the drive forever gone. This type of physical damage, where the read/write heads come in violent contact with the fragile platter(s), is commonly referred to as a “head crash” (the most extreme of all drive failures). I have attached Joe’s service invoice for your review.

Ouch. I trust the Data Doctors, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t ready to get a second opinion. Who else could help us with this hard drive failure? I thought about doing the rite thing - the SpinRite thing. I sent a note off to one of my personal heroes, Steve Gibson. In minutes, I received a response:

Did your dad drop his laptop?, or did a workstation fall over and crash to the floor? If neither of those, then it’s unlikely that a true physical head crash occurred and SpinRite can likely help a great deal. And in any event, giving SpinRite a whirl costs nothing and if anything *is* there to recover, SpinRite will do it.

I’m waiting for the hard drive to get here (they sent it back to Dad, who will be sending it on to me). I figured I’d plug ‘er in via an external enclosure, but Steve steered me away from that decision: “Actually Chris, it’s *much* better to plug the drive directly into a motherboard somewhere. A lot of useful diagnostic and forensic information can be lost through the USB or Firewire interface. Just plugging the drive into any motherboard IDE connector and turning SpinRite loose is the best bet… especially in a case like this.” So, we’ll see if SpinRite can set things right.

[tags]hard drive failure,hard drive crash,hard drive crashes,spinrite,head crash,steve gibson,drive failures[/tags]