It's a bit late now but raid zero is pretty risky as there is no redundancy and you basically double the risk of data loss from hardware failure.

Dell are okay. It's not their fault the drive failed. They did not make it.

There are some tricks that they or you could try, however only if you're sure you can't make it worse.

First would be gently warming the drive. We used to do this by putting it directly on another running drive (if they are fully enclosed) for a few hours. I'm not sayin put it in the oven here. Gently.

Next might be an hour in the freezer in a ziploc bag then try it straight away.

If nothing else an identical drive (make, model & size)could be sourced and the control board (electronics) swapped. This *could* work.

Finally if it's worth $20k to $100k to you to see that data again then you're an idiot for not having it backed up 6 ways they can remove the metal platters in a dust free environment and grind them which kind of 'wipes up' the 1s and 0s and destroys the platters in the process.

PS I hate Dells too, had a lappie that was a POS from day 1.

Stand back, she's about to BLOW!

Data recover from completely broken drives is expensive, and from RAID even more... they take the platters out load it on to a special drive, then take a bit level image... then try and recover the data from the image.

Seriously without the 2 HDD's you will not be able to recover the data.
Clicking sound doesn't equal broken drive.
My advice to put the old clicking HDD back in the RAID set... don't rebuild the RAID or change the stripe set.

If it's making a clicking sound and the drive is completely non-operational, it could be the head is stuck and a tap will free it up.

Try it... you may need to put it in to a USB caddy... once you're done take an image using acronis true image...

What ever you do, DON'T write anything to either disk in the array.

RAID 0 is good.
Not backing up data is bad.


PS: I worked for Dell.
They were good to me... business class travel everywhere :)... if you buy the Optiplex/Latitude line it's cheap crap. Get a Precision line and you'll be happy.

Thanks for all the input guys, Ive found a guy in Newcastle that has just started up his own business and hasnt quoted me half a mortgage.

Both drives were replaced in my computer and Ive kept both (one broken one good)so if it is just the head of the broken drive and it is fixable he should be able to use both drives to recover my stuff.

I did think about heating up trick and freezer trick but didnt think it would provide enough time to transfer all my pics, I guess if this guy cant fix it Ill try those myths.

Lesson learned about backing up, music, porn, movies, games etc are easily replaced its just the photos Im really after.

When I say I hate Dell I understand that the drive isnt a Dell one but this is the 4th call out Ive had for this computer, out of the box the DVD drive didnt work, then I couldnt work out why I couldnt play a simple game, Dell rep comes out and discovers that the cooling fan for the CPU was fitted with its protective plastic cap (the one that keeps the heat paste in location before its fitted), then the card reader stopped working, turns out the cable wasnt fitted (or the previous rep didnt refit it after fixing the CPU fan) and now the HDD has died.

BTW I have a Studio XPS 8100 i7 2.93Ghz 8GB Ram so its a decent one.

GalahOnTheBay said...

HDD's make lots of "interesting" noises, most of them bad...

Try a few of these on for size:

datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

You have waaay too much time on your hands Galah.

Then again ,,I clicked on each sound,,,sooooo,,,,,,,

well I sent my hard drive to a guy in Newcastle and he managed to get it working again and is in the process of recovering the data off the drives now.

Hopefully ll have all my data back Thursday or Friday.

He fixed the drive for $500 compared to $1500-$3000 we were quoted from other companies in Sydney. So lesson learned always back up stuff that cant be replaced!