Odd Question, But can it be done?

[SufferWell1396]

I have a Western Digital WD1600. Doesn't start up right, its a Western Digital, so i know its not that reliable... Its out of warranty, and ive only kept it as a keepsake because it was my first big hard drive. Now it just sits, unused and stagnent, taking up space. I have heard about *freezing* the hard drive in hope that it might work again. I think this is pretty stupid, but i am out of ideas, would this work???

P.S. I know i sound like an idiot for asking..:rolleyes:

[azzey]

Most of the time, that won't work.

Is the drive detected in the BIOS? Can it be seen in Windows?
Does it still spin up?

[SufferWell1396]

yeah it is detected in BIOS, its read as a 7334meg drive for some reason. It wont let the Compaq past the BIOS screen because it thinks a new drive is being inserted everytime the thing clicks *about every oh 3-8seconds*

[123456]

Happened to me with the same drive. I downloaded and burnt WD's diagnostics utilities to a cd. Then I wrote zero's to the drive. That's what worked.

[kiosk]

Don't freeze the drive - this trick is applies only to disk drives which have their RW head assemblies actuated by stepper motors, which have been obsolete in this role since 1990 when almost all manufacturers quickly switched over to modern, servo voice-coil actuators. Those who didn't, well, they ended up like Miniscribe and Kalok. (Bought a Kalok drive lately?)

The freezing trick could work on an ancient 20MB 5'25" dinosaur from 1985, but will only damage modern (post-1990) drives.

"Disk drive freezing", and "low level formatting" are nothing but parts of 1980s computer lore. Both of these terms, however, continue to be propagated by the ill-educated people who don't realize that disk drives have since evolved to the point where both of these actions would be pointless.

[SufferWell1396]

123456 i really owe you one man, IT LIVES!

im suprised really, i thought it was dead, now my compaq is streaming off of 280 gigs! and all my old files are there from back in the day:)

THANKS ALOT 123456!

[azzey]

Wait... what did you do?

[SufferWell1396]

Went to WD's website, downloaded the Data Lifeguard tools, i made a CD and a floppy, booted off both on the Compaq, neither worked. I was discouraged but then i tried my last resort... The AST... Supriseingly it pulled through for me, WD tools wouldnt work which made me give up just about every ounce of hope i had left in me, but after trying it a few times, the HDD just started spinning correctly again, the AST detected the size, and it was fully accessible there, so i stuck it back in the Compaq, and now it works great!:)

[azzey]

That's cool :)

[SufferWell1396]

Oh, well then now the HDD seems to be failing, ill have to run the diagnostics to get it running again and back up my data:(