said by Traxless :

I am laughing myself crazy. I read this post the night after my external HD crashed. I had some important videos on that drive and couldn't get them off. So I read this post and decided what the heck ... I shook the dang thing and it started to work well enough to copy the videos. Thanks for the suggestion. SHAKE IT! LOL

said by PeteC2 :

Now days, I'll help someone once...but if they don't heed kindly advice, and do the same thing again? I politely tell them I'm sorry but can't help with this one...

A kind of epiphany occurred one day in work some years back: I overheard one of my co-workers/friends bragging up to another co-worker how he didn't have to worry about viruses and such, because he had me to fix it for him anyways, so why bother?

Lesson learned.

said by seaquake :

Something as simple as buying an external hard drive and replicating to it every night could keep this from being an issue. I have an external drive on my server which I backup to every night. Another copy of the data is replicated to this computer's HDD and the server is using DFS to replicate with my wife's computer. So I've got a copy of the data in 4 different places.

I also produce media backups once a week.

said by ChiTang :

Just a wild shot, sometimes, when HD has some mechanical problem, putting the HD in various position may help, such as vertically, upside down etc...

said by PeteC2 :

Agreed. At least he's got whatever data is on the secondary drive. Frankly, it is almost beyond bothering to try and recover anything off of the C: drive. Outside of a HD recovery service, there won't be anything coming off of that drive. As described, that is not the kind of error that is very apt to respond to any user-intervention :(

said by CylonRed :

The tolerances are so close for the heads that you would really need a clean room to remove the platters as dust will interfere with the heads.

said by CylonRed :

Process for the freezer trick is not difficult - I tried it once with my mom's hard drive. Took the drive out and attached it to a enclosure for ease, wrapped it in a couple of layers of paper towel, then out it in a plastic freezer bag. Left it in the freezer for a good while then cut a hole in the plastic to insert the power and data cable while it was in the freezer - to prevent condensation and powered it up. In my case - it was a resounding failure.

I have a write up and pics somewhere here at DSLR - I will have to try and find the thread.

said by CylonRed :

the chance of getting anything off the laptop is less than 1% I would say. Click of death means you will be lucky to get anything off of it unless you take the platters out and put them in another drive case and the reason data recovery is so expensive.

You can try the freezer trick but that is the last, last, last resort.

said by ChiTang :

You really are doing your friend a favor and should be compensated for it. You are not going to change his behaviour and this is not going to be the last time. I can be certain that he will come back to you again especially if you do a good job this time. :)

said by ChiTang :

Knoppix is free and RStudio is a fantasic commercial product. I would try Knoppix first. Since he is going to reimburse you, you should get RStudio to compensate your inconvinience.

said by ChiTang :

As far as hooking the HD in an enclosure. Those software will run without taking the HD out. However, I would still put it an enclosure and check it by your PC. Just to make sure his problem is actually in the HD and not in the MOBO of laptop (before spending the money).