saving files from dieing hard drive

[beck]

Hi ive got a mac mini and a 160gb hard drive in an enclosure hocked up to it. But the external is dieing on me which im not very happy about with it only being about 9 months old, so ive ordered a 320gb which should be here soon.

Alot of the time transfering a file from the external to internal will just fail because it can't read write. So which is the best way to get all the files back/transfered.

I dont have and extra enclusure, but i do have a pc. Any ideas?

 

[SC68Cal]

If the hard drive is refusing to read and write to another volume, you're up a creek without a paddle.

 

[mad jew]

It's gonna have to be read at some stage. Just do your best getting it back onto the internal drive. Maybe do it in batches so it won't heat up too much, you might have more luck. Alternatively, take it to a professional data recover place, although that'll cost you dearly.

Good luck.

 

[rarty]

Freeze it.

A good way to coax a drive to work for a while is to wrap it up in some plastic (some ESD plastic I imagine is best) and leave it in the freezer for 30-45 minutes.

I did this and was then able to transfer my whole Home directory (50 GB) from a drive I pulled out of my PowerBook. It had stopped booting and at first would not mount for more than a minute or so (on PC or Mac). For all I know, this might be step one at a data retrieval service.

 

[mad jew]

If you choose to freeze it, be very careful. Sometimes it works, but sometimes condensation from the different temperatures (frozen drive versus room temperature) puts too much water inside your drive and it shortcircuits. This can potentially be bad for the drive but more importantly, it can be bad for the computer.