Hard drive issue need help/advice
 

OK, I am posting this anyway, even though I figure I am basically Fuked. I have a 1TB Maxtor hard drive that when I booted my computer gave me the deadly message of "please insert bootable media and hit enter" I did the basic connection checks and such, and found that in my bios, it does not even register as being connected. I installed it into an external drive enclosure and connected it to a different computer, and same story, doesn't recognize a drive connected. I am of course certain that the drive's controller card has gone South. I am curious as to how I might be able to try and recover the data. Is it possible to contact Maxtor and get a replacement controller to install onto the hard drive? or am I pretty much out of luck? suggestions??

Maxtor likely will not send you a new controller, and even if they did it might not help. You may be able to RMA the drive itself, depending on how old it is, but any data on it is probably as good as lost. It's possible to recover data from a damaged drive, but there's not much to be done without special tools and software outside of the consumer realm.

You can try tossing it in the freezer for an hour or so, and then reading it. I've heard of this working long enough to recover mission critical data, although I've never seen it first-hand.

This is a lesson learned time and again all over the world -- mission critical data should always exist in multiple locations. Back that shit up.

I can verify that the freezer thing works but it should be your last resort. If this method is attempted the first thing should be to copy the critical data off since the drive will fail when it warms up and in my experiance it's a ONE SHOT deal.

But it may not bee this bad, the "please insert ...." message may be caused by bad/corrupted MBR that can be fixed for example with the /MBR switch on fdisk (depends on OS version) or the data on the drive can be accessed from a diffrent computer (or LiveCD boot etc.

Best of luck, just don't rush into anything
Zweiblumen

While I agree that in many cases the message "please insert..." can be attributed to bad MBR, The main board doesn't even confirm that the drive even EXISTS, so even F-disk wouldnt be an option. I have accepted that the drive is toast, I was just curious if anyone had ever tried to swap out a controller to recover a drive. I try to keep things backed up, but as is many the case, I had been lax of late, and was actually working on getting everything backed up anyway the night before, but had only gotten the system settings and all backed up. Oh well. chalk another up to a drive that I shouldnt have bought in the first place. I have heard that since Maxtor got bought out their drive quality has gone downhill.

You can always send it in for recovery. That will run about 500-1000. From what I hear, they don't look at the data at all.

Sorry I should have read the original post better I just have seen too many people loose data because they acted without thinking.

It is possible to swap out the controler plate on a HD with one from a exactly indentical drive. But I have never heard of anyone geeting a new controler plate from the manufacturer.

Best of luck.
Zweiblumen