"eb7g" wrote in message
news:OmOKe.192114$5V4.119424@pd7tw3no...
Xrayman wrote:

download the diagnostic disk from WD and run the quick and extended
health
test on the drive. you can also zero fill the drive (since you don't
need
the data) and verify afterward to see if there are bad sectors in the
drive.
unfortunately the program does not give you the actual errors, just
error
codes so you can't really tell what they are. but having this happen to
the
drive once, you should avoid putting important data on it, even if it
recovers.


"eb7g" wrote in message
news:4TCKe.186935$%K2.75849@pd7tw1no...

ccrc wrote:


I use GetDataBack and it has worked wonders on my old "unreadable" (by
Windows) drives.
-Chris.

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 05:57:41 GMT, eb7g wrote:



I have a 120GB Western Digital Caviar that is less than two years old.
I
was rendering a movie from it when it froze and then nothing could
read
it again.

The computer bios will see it, but windows can't. Can't seem to access
it in anyway, even to reformat it. It spins and seems fine....

Any idea what happened, and if it's usable? If so, how, as my
operating
system won't read it. Warranty is expired.


Cool. I don't need the data on it, I just want to be able to use it
again, as it's not an old drive.




As it turns out the Diagnostic tools don't work as I immediately get a
'cable' error to the drive. The cables I fine, I tested it out with
other cables and drives.

Sounds like your drive electronics is toast, time for a new drive. If you
want to recover the data, you can use a circuit board from an identical
drive. You can put the good board back after the data recovery. Usually a
media death starts with bad sectors growing slowly or very quickly. Oh
course a head crash is instant death as well but you usually hear a lot
clicking from the head and spinning up and down as it tries to read from the
dead head.