HDD locks up computer at "Detecting IDE Drives" HELP!

[outz]

Hey guys it's been awhile!

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a particular computer problem I'm having.

I have an IDE drive out of a notebook that locks up an HP Pavilion at the "HP Invent" screen. So I took it out and hooked it up to an adapter into my working desktop. Sure enough it locks up my desktop at the "Detecting IDE Drives" POST screen. Just a note, I've tried every jumper configuration, every IDE channel, and multiple IDE cables so it's not that. The drive must be dead.

Anyways I want to recover the data on the drive and just buy a new one. That would be no problem if I could boot into a linux CD, BartPE or other type of bootable environment but I can't. This drive locks up any machine at POST and won't let you get far enough to boot off a disk.

I know IDE drives are not hot-swappable but is it possible to get some kind of IDE -> Firewire or IDE -> USB adapter and load it that way? How do you recover data on a drive like this besides sending it to a place for a gazillion dollars? Hopefully someone will have some ideas...I've recovered many drives but never had a scenario like this.

Thanks.

[outz]

Would something like this work:?

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0300746

[shifty]

The drive is locking up the system upon initialization. The only way you're probably going to get your data back is if you send it off to some service such as DriveSavers, where they can remove the platters and replace them, or if you can find a dupe of your hard drive and replace the logic board. But the chances of the latter are slim.

I have run into the same situation you're talking about, and tried damned near everything in my power to get it NOT to lock up, including USB drive cages, firewire->IDE cables, etc. No luck. I personally think you may be SOL.

I don't think your drive (data) is likely to be nuked, this is probably an electrical component malfunction on the drive itself.

[Bald_Yew]

It's worth a shot. You could go cheaper though:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000090092%201053807123%201054107130&name=IDE

Even if the drive is un-savable, you'd be able to reuse the enclosure.

[Dr. Death]

Can you somehow set the BIOS to NOT autodetect, then use a CD from the drive manufacturer (most mfrs have a downloadable test disk that you can put on a CD, that will check the drive and run it through its paces.

Although with a problem like that, where the electronics has obviously failed, you probably won't get very far without sending it to a company that would place the platters in a working assembly, then recover what data they could.