hard drive clicking - able to recover?

[KnightRid]

Well my father-in-laws computer went belly up a week before his wife passed away. We have been fighting the insurance company all this time and finally they are going to pay out, but not at the value of his computer since they deem a $1500 computer is not a typical home users machine and are going to rip him off by giving him at the most $800! Bastards.

Now my question - the hard drive will not boot, read, etc - it just sounds like it hammers the heads to the top of the drive when you turn the computer on. Is there any way to recover data? I have tried some programs I had, ut a lot of them do not seem to like Vista, or when I reboot ( western digital tools ) they say DOS can not be loaded

I was going to try the freezing thing, but the drive is in warranty and I would not want to void the warranty because of freezing it.

Any ideas?


Mike

We dont need much, just his pictures and recipes.

Everyone needs to make a new years resolution to BACKUP DATA!

[HONkUS]

I doubt freezing the drive would void the warranty since it doesn't have any lasting side effects how would they know you froze it?

Also if the hard drive is the only thing thats wrong with the computer then 800 bucks can buy a new drive and some nice upgrades ;)

[Apoptosis]

well it doesn't have to be frozen in water... I froze a hard drive and it worked for a good five minutes before it shut down. I think the ice just keeps it frozen longer, but I'm not sure about water getting into the drive through the breather holes. I wonder if you got a box of dry ice pellets and put the drive in there (with a bag) and closed the lid if it would work for 30-60 minutes. Dry ice here is cheap and drug stores usually have it.

I haven't tried this or know of anyone that has... just thinking in my head what I would do.

[KnightRid]

Well freezing didnt work - still just smacked the head around.

I didnt try dry ice I would probably end up at the hospital

Mike

Guess it just either goes for a RMA or the trash heap.