Uh oh, I think my hard drive froze ...

[billb]

Was headed out of town so I shut down all my computers & ps3's ... now one PC is not coming back up. It's in a room separate from the rest of the house and I left the heat off. I think the drive it boots from is not spinning up ... ever seen one do that when it normally runs all the time then you turn it off for a while and all of a sudden it won't spin up? I have anyway ...

I'll just toss it in the microwave for a few minutes to warm it up -- that should take care of it! Just kidding! Hopefully when it warms up in here it will work, though ...

[billb]

Ohhh it's not looking good for this Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 / 7200 RPM 30 GB drive whose warranty ended in July of 2004! About 8 years before failure is not that bad, I guess ...

[uncholowapo]

I still have my humongous 20GB IDE Western Digital Drive that I took from my very first computer(500MHz, 512MB RAM) that is resting with the ENIAC's now.....and it was an upgrade from a 10GB IDE drive that came stock. I had that computer since I was 7? Around 12 years ago. Amazing how parts are so durable........

[ppietro]

Okay - Paul's frozen hard drive trick.

Many times, when a hard drive freezes, it's due to a phenomenon that, in our computer lab, we called "stiction".

This can occur between the platters of the disc and the read heads if the platters warp ever so slightly. Especially when the read heads pull back to their "safe" location on a power down, and the drives cool off.

This is gonna sound weird - really weird - but it works sometimes.

Take the drive out of your computer - and gently bang it on the ground.

You want to hit it on the ground with a gentle, not excessive force. I usually do this circuit board side down - normal drive orientation.

The idea isn't to damage the drive - just free the heads.

Of course - I take no responsibility if you damage your drive, etc. But - if you're gonna toss it anyway - give it a try.

Cheers,
Paul

[billb]

It's spinning again, and I'm backing up data from it as fast as I can ... Yes, I've had to "whack" a hard drive or two in my time to get it spinning again, but fortunately didn't have to do that with this one. Once the data is backed up I'll be sure to give it a good "whack" though.