Please Help resque the harddisk data

[junglemike]

Hello. All of a sudden my secondry master harddisk (maxtor 80gb) gone bad. It is still seen in device manager, and opens in explorer, but when i try to read or write from it - the speed is about 30kb/s - slower than a floppy. First I ckecked DMA issue. Than I tried to put it in another IDE channel (primary slave instead of seconary master) - I also tried forcing PIO mode in bios - notheing helps.

I can't copy my documents away from this harddisk. Once I start copy process (it shows 30kb/s) - than i get an error.
If i try to run scandisk - Windows freezes..
I even put this harddisk in my second computer, and all is the same there.

I looked in google for help - and found some Maxtor disk utility - but it creates bootable floppy. I don't have floppy drive in any computer.
What else can i do?

[neuron2]

What else can i do? You can develop a backup strategy for your important data.

You can try a data recovery firm for this incident, but they are expensive. Sorry you had to learn the hard way about backing up your data. :(

[junglemike]

Thanks for responce. Well, my _really_ important data is backed up
But This was my main video processing disk. All scripts and tests are located there. The worst thing is that i can see it all, just can't copy .

[junglemike]

Guys, does anybody know how can I create bootable cd-rom from bootable floppy?
The PowerMax utility (maxtor diagnostic tol) wants to create a bootable diskette. I have no floppy at all. I downloaded freeware Virtual floppy drive program, created A: 3.5" virtual floppy, and than PowerMax copied there these files:
http://img15.imgspot.com/u/06/173/16/floppy1151093300.gif
How do i create a bootable cd-rom from this image diskette?
I guess if i just burn those files on CD- it will not be bootable.

[CWR03]

Nero can create both a bootable CD and a floppy-emulation bootable CD from your floppy files.

There's a trick I've never tried, but I've heard it works: place the hard drive in the freezer for an hour, then reinstall it, power up and get as much data transfered as you can before it warms up and fails again.

[unskinnyboy]

200 ways to revive a hard drive (http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6255-5029761-1.html)