40G WDC HDD Failed :(

**wizer** · 18th October 2002

Last night I came back to my PC and it would not come out of standby. So I had to cold boot it. When I got back into XP the drive was unreadable and showing as Data Type: RAW

This morning I d/l Western Digital's Diagnostic tools and ran all the tests on the drive and it reported it to be fine... no problems. So I booted to DOS to see if I could browse to it and I can.. I can see all the files there in DOS.

Question is... wTF is happening??? I need to recover the data is possible... any ideas???

**hxbro** · 18th October 2002

Linux might be a good bet - you'll have networking then, so you could at least copy the data to another machine.

Hx

**wizer** · 18th October 2002

eugh.. dont like the sound of unix

surely if DOS is seing it then I can get XP to see it

**arrid** · 18th October 2002

Seen as you can bootup it sounds like a second drive?

So xcopy the stuff over to a directory on another hd

**wizer** · 18th October 2002

ok its the primary slave and is purely storage. BUT its is 40Gig so backing it up will be difficult witout buying another hdd

i really need to some how get it back up and working

Somehow XP is not recognising it? Its FAT32 btw

**dingle_666** · 18th October 2002

u got a cd burner? if so... download cdrwin for dos and back up the data on as many cds as u can get and if nesecary get another hdd m8

**rishy** · 20th October 2002

if still in warranty do an advance swap out with western digital where they send you the drive first - you then have 30 days to send the faulty one back

**zulu95e** · 20th October 2002

Try the drive in another PC running Win98 or ME and see if you can see the data there

**wizer** · 20th October 2002

i cant find the warranty

Yes I can see it in 98... but I want to just repair it in XP

Looks like imn gonna have to loose the data :/

**hxbro** · 21st October 2002

Partition magic might be able to do something with it.

Hx

**CzarJunkie** · 21st October 2002

Originally posted by wizer
i cant find the warranty

Yes I can see it in 98... but I want to just repair it in XP

Looks like imn gonna have to loose the data :/

If you can see the data in win98, do what someone else suggested and transfer it to another machine over the network, or copy it to another HD.

Plus, you don't need a warranty usually for a HD, if it f**ks up within 3 years of purchase, just make sure you have the reciept from the shop you bought it from and return it, requesting either a replacement, repair or refund.

**wizer** · 21st October 2002

cheers CJ m8.. but As I've said its 40gig of data and the biggest drive I have anywhere else is 6Gig. I have bit the bullit and copied over 4gig of stuff I really needed and kissed goodbye to over 30 gig of precious mp3's... gonna have to get that sat connection now to replenish my stock

I'd still like to know wtf happened.. just dont make sense.

Oh and I dont have any reciepts for the drive either.

**CzarJunkie** · 21st October 2002

Have a word with one of your kind friends who've got a dvd writer and send them the HD and get them to transfer your mp3's onto dvd-r, I'm sure somone would do it if you offered to pay for the blank media.