Hello Perry,

At 10:47 PM 5/10/1998 -0700, you wrote:

>I seem to be having problem with a 3, 4 year old hard drive.
>
>Normally, my drive gives me no problems.  However, this morning,
>I turned on my computer to be greeted with the message
>"Primary master hard disk fail", after the BIOS memory test was complete.
>
>I tried reseating cables, but there is no change.  I'd also like to add
>that there is an annoying high pitch noise emanating from the drive, and
>on occasion, the drive sounds as if the head is hitting a stop of some sort.

  The high pitch noise and the "Click" you hear is probably the following:

1. The hard drive has had a head crash somewhere within the hard drive.
This is usually on a servo track that is needed by the hard drive to
operate correctly. There are three Servo tracks I know of:
        1 - Primary Servo Track.
        2 - Mid-Range Servo Track.
        3 - Maintenance Track.
  This occurrence used to be very rare. Although now it seems to happen
much more often, mostly in Western Digital hard drives.

2. The hard drives electronic components have been damaged. This happens in
most problems.

>My question:  Is my hard disk truly dead?  Can I possibly do anything to
>revive it?

  In my experience, it is probably dead. To be sure I would bring it into a
data recovery company that has a free evaluation, will not cost much to see
if the hard drive is dead, and see if the data can be retrieved.

  Data retrieval is the "Dark Art" of computer repair. If you know data
recovery, you usually do not give out the "Highly Secret" information out.

Good luck! and I hope you are able to get your data back.


Regards,

Tim Lider
Advanced Data Solutions              ICQ: 7562541
Web Site: http://www.adv-data.com E-Mail: Mailto:[log in to unmask]