maxtor 40gb hard drive

[guinness_1864]

i have a problem! one of our stand alone machines takes forever to get past the bios screen and then says
"primary hard disk failed"
i have recently replaced the hard drive with a new 80gb but i was wondering if there is any way to either repair the 40gb drive or to retrieve the data on it?

cheers Guinness

[ICT_GUY]

How valuable is the data?

try plugging it into a usb to ide adapter to see if your PC will pick it up, else you are looking at some serious money (£300 upwards) to get the data off of it.

[dhicks]

i was wondering if there is any way to either repair the 40gb drive or to retrieve the data on it?

If it's a hardware problem there's no practical way to repair it - chuck it out and get a new one. You can try reading the data off the drive by placing it in an USB external drive box/adapter (around £10 off eBay) and maybe using a file-recovery utility to help you read the file system.

--
David Hicks

[Galway]

Try it in a test rig, see if it is detected in the bios without errors. If it is then download the Maxtor diagnostics and see if it can pass the tests, after you have backed up your data.

For what its worth I would take the top off and let the students have a look inside just for show. I take the magnets out, screw them to the notice board and use them as copy holders. dot let the little darlings have them though or all the CRT's in the school will have purple screens !.