From: [IDC]Dragon <idc-dragon_at_gmx.de>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:31:46 +0200 (MEST)

> This weekend, I managed to inflict some serious damage to my archos
> jbr v2. It was attached to a laptop via usb, and things moved just
> the wrong way and it was quickly detached and flung a little ways and
> landed hard on the tile floor. ouch!

An opportunity for a 120 GB replacement?

> So, the poor little seagate HD tries and tries to work, but only
> manages to get the directory listing up on the screen after a lot of
> seeking noise. usb mode never seems to work. I'd love to be able to
> just plug it in once and copy everything off of it.

USB doesn't work?! That's strange, where is the difference to the drive?
In any case, you may want to take the disk out and connect it directly to
your computers' IDE and a beefy power supply.

> I know that there isn't much of a chance, but if anyone has any
> suggestions, I'd appreciate it. I have already tried the freezer
> trick, which I've used in the past with other drives that have died.

The "freezer trick"? Don't know that one.

> This actually seemed to make it have more trouble spinning up. Any
> other ideas on how to rescue my data? I don't have the funds to send
> the drive out to a recovery service.

Yes, those charge an arm and a leg.

Some tricks I do know:

- Sometimes the head is stuck sucked to the platter, a jolt helps to rip it
off. (But you said yours spins up, shows the root dir?) The gentle way us to
hold it with your arm pointing along the rotational axis, the twisting your
wrist back and forth. The mass of the platters tries to stay and applies
forces to get the head off.

- When you don't plan to use the drive any more, it's actually not that bad
to open it up and check inside what's wrong. Sometimes you can clear of
small debries or get something going. You don't need a cleanroom if you
don't care for lifetime any more, may even operate it "open frame". If
you're a perfectionist, you can get closer to cleanroom conditions by
operating in the bathroom, making it steamy first. The humidity lets the
dust fall out.

Good luck!
Jörg

-- 
Analog-/ISDN-Nutzer sparen mit GMX SmartSurfer bis zu 70%!
Kostenlos downloaden: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

Received on 2006-04-10