Likely futile. Always backup! Always!!!

It's possible you could send it to a data recovery firm, but they will probably charge out the nose (if they will even take such an old HDD). Various "data recovery" tools across the net claim success, but don't mean much in the case of a physical fault (which is what your unit seems to be experiencing).

Can you hear the disk spinning?
Is it making any strange noise?
Can you post the exact model or better any picture of it?

Throw it in the freezer.

Ampera wrote:

Throw it in the freezer.

NEVER EVER put a HDD in the freezer! Meats belong in the freezer not HHD. Condensation moisture is not your friend.
Does the BIOS still see the HDD or does it show wierd characters?
What exactly is your HDD? Photos?
Cloning the HDD should be the very first thing to do before attempting any type of recovery. You actually use the cloned image for data recovery.

I don't know if the freezing trick is applicable to a drive that clunks. Maybe someone has experience with freezing drives with that symptom. Personally I've never frozen a drive at all.
A major physical failure like this is probably the most hopeless scenario, I'm afraid.
Unless there's something else better to try (and I'd love to hear it if there is), then you might as well freeze it before giving up. Don't do that if you'd want to send it in for professional recovery though - in that case, they'd probably prefer that you do *not* do anything weird to it that may complicate their more professional efforts. I'm assuming you don't want to spend that kind of money on it.

If you do try freezing it, then have a system ready to dump it's contents immediately after removing from the freezer. Maybe even put an ice pack on top of the drive during the process to keep it cold. There will be condensation but I think that's manageable, the PCB is only on one side of the drive and at this point the risk would be warranted.
Depending on how much you're trying to recover and how it's laid out on disk, attempting a full image dump might be ideal, but it might not have enough time to finish. If you just want a relatively small amount of data then it might be better to copy the files at the filesystem level.
I wouldn't rely on booting the drive's own OS, instead hook it up to something else and dump from there. If the drive starts up at all, then the faster you can get it copied the better.
If you're comfortable with linux then look into 'ddrescue'. It's designed for things like this. But nothing will work unless you can get the drive to be recognized first.

@shamino Hard Disc Drives should NEVER be put in conventional freezers. it will do more harm than good. That method is only used by professional data recovery techs. Do not try that at home. Read the correct methods on data recovery forums, not from some kid on a gaming forum.
The OP needs to give us more info about the HDD. Even if the drive is not being seen by the current motherboard bios other boards can be made to see it using data recovery software tools. cloning the drive and geting a recoverable image file is the first thing to do. You work with a copy of the image file and do nothing to the drive or original image.

Properly sealed in a bag, maybe some paper for desiccant, a freezer can't do much harm. Running them cold in warm air with frost forming is the dumb last ditch effort part. Bit of an off chance that it'd help any, probably more likely with those 90's drives.

I had success with the freezer trick however,

(a) the drive wasn't making any strange noises
(b) the drive was detected in BIOS and Windows
(c) files and directories could be listed, and errors only occurred when files were opened or copied.

If this isn't the case for your drive then freezing probably won't work.

Putting the drive in the freezer gave me about 10 minutes of error-free access to the data before the errors would restart. It took several re-freezings to get all the data off. In the end only 1 file remained unrecoverable (out of about 1000).

The freezer trick is an effort to recover data with a hard drive that's a bit over the edge. You will of COURSE want to control moisture somehow. Using paper towels, as firage said, is not a bad idea. You could also run the drive in front of an air conditioner (if you have one) as the air is not only cooler, but a lot dryer. This will end up busting the drive, but if you need to get data off it, that's a quick and easy trick when nothing else works.

The ultimate solution is a backup system, or if you really want to do it right (and cool) use RAID. A 4 drive 1/0 configuration means speed and reliability come to your advantage.

RAID =/= backups. They have different objectives. For retro stuff, a little downtime due to a failed hard disk isn't a big deal, so RAID is not so important.

gdjacobs wrote:

RAID =/= backups. They have different objectives. For retro stuff, a little downtime due to a failed hard disk isn't a big deal, so RAID is not so important.

RAID is like a backup that is being constantly taken. Every drive action is cloned to another drive. It's the best option for having a truly redundant storage system. All mirroring is done by hardware (or software in special cases) and doesn't need anything but for the array to be build, and to be rebuilt when a drive is replaced.

Of course backing up is often a cheaper option, but RAID is build for true redundancy (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) which makes it GREAT for backups, not to mention in a striped array, you get improved speed and can merge capacity between drives. RAID isn't just about drive downtime, in fact it's a pretty shit solution in some cases for that because of the long rebuild times on large arrays, at least on it's own.

It is however great for personal use, which is why so many boards did and still do include it. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's effective for redundancy and as a way to utilize multiple drives efficiently.

Ampera wrote:

The freezer trick is an effort to recover data with a hard drive that's a bit over the edge. You will of COURSE want to control moisture somehow. Using paper towels, as firage said, is not a bad idea. You could also run the drive in front of an air conditioner (if you have one) as the air is not only cooler, but a lot dryer. This will end up busting the drive, but if you need to get data off it, that's a quick and easy trick when nothing else works.

The ultimate solution is a backup system, or if you really want to do it right (and cool) use RAID. A 4 drive 1/0 configuration means speed and reliability come to your advantage.

https://www.gillware.com/blog/best-practices- … -recovery-myth/

Ampera wrote:

RAID is like a backup that is being constantly taken. Every drive action is cloned to another drive. It's the best option for ha […]
Show full quote

gdjacobs wrote:

RAID =/= backups. They have different objectives. For retro stuff, a little downtime due to a failed hard disk isn't a big deal, so RAID is not so important.

RAID is like a backup that is being constantly taken. Every drive action is cloned to another drive. It's the best option for having a truly redundant storage system. All mirroring is done by hardware (or software in special cases) and doesn't need anything but for the array to be build, and to be rebuilt when a drive is replaced.

Of course backing up is often a cheaper option, but RAID is build for true redundancy (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) which makes it GREAT for backups, not to mention in a striped array, you get improved speed and can merge capacity between drives. RAID isn't just about drive downtime, in fact it's a pretty shit solution in some cases for that because of the long rebuild times on large arrays, at least on it's own.

It is however great for personal use, which is why so many boards did and still do include it. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's effective for redundancy and as a way to utilize multiple drives efficiently.

RAID =/= BACKUPS!

Keep in mind:
- Not all RAID levels provide redundancy. RAID 0 only provides better speed, but doubles the chances to lose data (if a disk fails, you'll lose data on BOTH disks).
- A backup is a snapshot of your data taken at a given time, and RAID can only provide hardware redundancy. If you delete an important file or you get a ransomware, RAID won't protect you (disks are OK, file integrity is OK... but data is garbage).

So, if you want to be fully protected, your best chance is take backups frequently. RAID is good if you want to have high availability, but not for data protection (it will protect you from hardware failures but not from software failures). Entreprises should have both protections (RAID to ensure that data is always available, backups to recover those data lost), but backups should be enough at home.

Opening up a drive is a bad idea because dust right?

Errius wrote:

Opening up a drive is a bad idea because dust right?

Definitely, though older drives can work without a cover much longer before biting the dust. I had a couple old Maxtor drives with a ton of bad sectors I ran without covers to see what happened and they lasted about 30 minutes. It has something to do with the heads not as close to the disk as with modern drives, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I haven't tried that, but I remember having serious problems with dust trying to scan photographic negatives some years ago. I gave up in frustration because no matter how carefully I cleaned and dusted them, the resulting scans would always be covered in dust particles. I never figured out how to solve this. Blowing air across them is no good since new dust is deposited as fast as old dust is removed.

Ampera wrote:

RAID is like a backup that is being constantly taken. Every drive action is cloned to another drive. It's the best option for ha […]
Show full quote

gdjacobs wrote:

RAID =/= backups. They have different objectives. For retro stuff, a little downtime due to a failed hard disk isn't a big deal, so RAID is not so important.

RAID is like a backup that is being constantly taken. Every drive action is cloned to another drive. It's the best option for having a truly redundant storage system. All mirroring is done by hardware (or software in special cases) and doesn't need anything but for the array to be build, and to be rebuilt when a drive is replaced.

Of course backing up is often a cheaper option, but RAID is build for true redundancy (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) which makes it GREAT for backups, not to mention in a striped array, you get improved speed and can merge capacity between drives. RAID isn't just about drive downtime, in fact it's a pretty shit solution in some cases for that because of the long rebuild times on large arrays, at least on it's own.

It is however great for personal use, which is why so many boards did and still do include it. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's effective for redundancy and as a way to utilize multiple drives efficiently.

See below. RAID improves uptime by mitigating hardware failures. Backups provide data security by safely storing full copies of data for future recovery or reference. RAID doesn't protect against operational mistakes, security failures, disasters that obliterate your server, etc...