Well, my Dell's HDD finally crashed tonight after 1.5 years of working fine. Came home and the machine was running really slow & locking up, than it started clicking & clunking, which says HDD crash! What really sucks is that I needed some info (PST file and Favorites) for my job search, so I'm a little CF-ed right now. I'm using my wife's PC and have ordered a replacement and clone kit from Dell, but the timing is terrible!

At least I have the important stuff backed up to my network drive so not all is lost. What else can happen this month?!?!?

 

just an idea, try putting the Hard drive in the freezer for half an hour, then boot up the computer, or hook it up to another computer, get the data off of it as fast as you can. I had that happen to me once and the freezer trick worked! It might work for you, but yours could be really dead since it is clicking a lot, worth a try though.

 

Yah..this worked for me too. I had a Maxtor 250gb drive take a dump..I froze it overnight, and it worked again.

 

whats the freezing do?

 

Magically fixes anything.

 

anyone have a freezer large enough for my truck?

 

i believe you're supposed to put it in a ziploc bag first, to keep condensation to a minimum...

 

That reminds me - gotta backup to my external drive tonight...

Sorry to hear of the problems.

 

I've never heard of the freezer idea before, but it sounds like a good one. I left the machine on CHKDSK overnight and it finally made it through and let me back in this morning. I did a complete system backup to my external drive and now I'm waiting for my new drive to arrive from Dell so I can clone it and be back in action.

Now, can freezing help my job search and get me a job this week? I'll try anything since I need employment now.

 

I got my new HDD in, cloned and installed and it makes a big difference! 80g, 5400rpm w/8MB cache, makes for a definite speed improvement. Now I can wipe the old drive and use it for a portable external drive!