About two weeks ago I had my D drive just not respond anymore..  It showed in the BIOS but not in the window's browser.. also some sectors in the physical drive seem to not work properly showing errors...  Dell sent me a brand new drive...  The tech guy was real nice and attentative..
OH NO! The "new" one did not "respond" either...    It shows up in the BIOS but not in the windows browser..  Dell said it might be a windows problem as well...   I could not stay with the tech guy too long but will be calling them back..     no conclusions yet...

The tech said it could have been (maybe) something I downloded...  worm?

I bring this to your attention in case someone might be having the same symtom problems with their hard drive...

Sounds like a controller to me.  Try replacing the controller cable first of all.  I did that when one of my hard drives became inaccessible and it worked just fine but that may not be your problem so ...

What version of Windows are you using?
how's it 'not responding?'
the cable bit above is always a good thing to do.
Another thing is there's 'master' and 'slave' settings (on older hard drive, if it's a SATA type, I'm not that up on those). One master, one slave on each cable.
Any error messages?

listen first for the hard drive to spin up. You should feel some vibration, if you can touch it.
As for sectors not being read, usually track 0 (at least on the boot drive) has several sectors that can't be bad. There's tools in Control Panel (for example in XP) that have hard drive utilities that can reallocate sectors around the bad ones.

The tech was nice and attentive? What did he actually say??

I know I'm being a nudge, but I do this for a living..;)

pakled, my son works for Dell doing on-site tech support and he's the one who taught me to go for the simple stuff first.

Yup, what Victoria_Lee said, that would be my first guess, especially since a new HDD reacted in the same way as the old one. Replace the "ribbon" cable.

OKay... Update:  

The new hard drive just needed to get properly partitioned....   The old hard drive with ALL my work seemed to have fried!   The 0 sector of the physical drive is not working....   Error messages.. 

Now HOW the hell it got fried just after a defrag is anybodies guess...  Dell wants it back in two weeks or so and disk recovery is not cheap...  especially if the hard ware of the drive is faulty..  

If I dont recover it and have to send it back to Dell, I will destroy my data however!  Nasty is seeing your work appearing in some Hong Kong or Singapore website... lol... 

Thank you all for your advice....   you all had the right Idea..  Dell and I did a check on card and cables...   could this have anything to do with rev. Falwell's death.....?  NAAAh!

My poor gatling gun..  BOO HOOO.....  

Tom

I have recovered many a HDD files for friends and family that were in the same situation as you.

Unfortunately, that takes some $, hardware and luck.

-My old boss had purchased Ontracks "Easy Recovery" spftware, which ain't cheap, but there are other Recovery programs out there.

-I would then use an external HDD case to attach the dead HDD to my working computer.

-Then, the luck part. How burnt is the HDD? Can I get just partial amount of files, or the whole smash? No way to tell until you arrive at this part of the process.

VERY sorry to see you in this situation. I have an old, dead HDD that has my very first Bryce scenefiles on it. ONLY way to get those off there is full blown surgery, and that will be $500. Bleh.

Does the old HD power up and spins?  Are you using FAT32 or NTFS?  If it does power up and spins, there is a slim chance that you could slave it and get data off of it. If you're using FAT32, it is possible to use the FDISK utility and possibly the /MBR switch to reset those allocation tables.

Thanks for your feedback Agent Smith... I wish I could send it to you....  I'd trust you with it..   The money is the problem... 

Does the old HD power up and spins?  Are you using FAT32 or NTFS?

• It is an NTFS...  and yes it does spin...  The physical 0 sector is not working..  the drive does not show up in the window's browser nor does it show up in those free recovery software I downloaded...  It was a "D" drive not my main drive...  It also does not show in an enclouse for drives..  the drive will not let you in..  it needs heavier application methods..

can it be saved?  yes. but it will be expensive...  It needs some heavy software know how... and even retriving raw data and putting the data into cohesive and readable form...  means time spent with it and time as you know is money...  I can not right now spend $500.00 + plus  on the spot for recovering a hard drive.. 
there is this recovery place (forgot the name)  that is willing to charge me $75.00 per hour..  the max they charge with out asking is $300.00..  4 hours of work..   I was told by other techs that it is the best price they have heard of...  They don't have a physical outlet store you can go to..  Someone comes to your home and picks up your drive..  and leaves with it to who knows where..   Does not sound like accountability is present...  

I got about two weeks before I have to send it back to Dell..  Next possible step is to find a way to destroy all my data..  any suggestions? lol..

Thank you for asking Death.. 

Have you tried to recover by using NTFS's backup copy of the boot sector?

No I haven't....     The physical part of the drive is not letting me in.... this is not just a software problem...   and it is not my C drive.. my C has that Dell inserted boot sectoe copy..  is this what you are refering to?

No. All drives partitioned as NTFS or FAT32 have a special sector for recovering the primary boot sector. It's a backup of the primary boot sector, sector 0. The backup sector tends to be the very last sector on the HD. You can use a program like DiskProbe.exe that will allow access to that backup sector. But even if you don't have that program or can't find it, knowing the exact size of the partitions you can manually rebuild that sector 0. If the sizes match precisely you should have full access to the drive again.

The best bet would be to use the built-in backup copy of the boot sector which all NTFS drives have.

Here is a Microsoft article how to do it (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153973). Also doing a google search "Recovering NTFS Boot Sector on NTFS Partitions" should come up with other how-to's. There's another program called ZAR, but I never used it, but have heard it can also help, but I think ZAR is a bit more involved.

I hope these things help. But if they just screw it up even more, then you might be well on your way of destroying that data instead of recovering it ;-)

I appriciate your input very much...
My hard drive has a chip burnt..  or  faulty...   how could you get into the drive to copy the bootsector...?  Your suggestion implies the ability to get in....

my disk is not accessible...    and yes, If I try using free ware stuff I might destroy the data..   Believe me I want my data..

I might have to uncrew, open the drive case and tear out the inner disk and send the case back to Dell...  

If I had a vacuumed dust free sealed room, I could remove the inner disk and put it in another drive..  or into one of those special open drives made for that purpose...

I'm I.T. Unleashed now remember?? I used to work I.T. Corporate.  I have to tools and Non-Destructive ways to recover.

You can always ship the drive to me, I'll scan the drive first and give you a report if I can recover anything or not (non destructive).

If I can recover, I have a Portable drive that I can recover onto and ship you're original drive back + the portable drive on loan.

Cost?? to ship the drive to me and thats it.

Why would I want to do this for a complete stranger? Cause I've been through it too many times and if I can help I wil..

Let me know, if you want to do this.

Worst case scenario.  I cant recover anything and you get you're drive back unharmed.

no problem. I go for simple, first, too. But now that we have more info to go on...;) Yup, track 0 being out is usually a bad sign. Back in the old (regular) FAT days, you could get Norton Utilities (I know, I'm dating myself..;) to  use the copy to restore the original. Heck, fdisk /mbr used to work as well, though I haven't had to do this with NTFS (just lucky, I guess).

go with the above, it's all good advice. Hope you get everything back. Once you do, burn CDs like there's no tomorrow. Always good to have a Plan B

I'm I.T. Unleashed now remember?? I used to work I.T. Corporate.  I have to tools and Non-Destructive ways to recover.

Why would I want to do this for a complete stranger? Cause I've been through it too many times and if I can help I wil..

Well that sounds like a good deal...  I got to tell you that my trust function is on overdrive and smoking... 
There are a lot of passwords and other sensitive things in that crashed drive...( Unless I had already moved it over to my external drive)     The most missed of course is a lot of my new work for the last 1 1/2 to 2 years... Original Rhino and Bryce files plus images..   some JPGs, textures... and some old stuff . .  I never put banking business in my computer I always thought it to be a mistake to do that...  I was planning to make a paper copy of my passwords and delete the file..  but my backup drive takes a dive on me...

Two things.
I would like you to tell me, now that you know about the hardware inaccessibility of the drive, what steps are you planning to do...  Enclosures didn't work on this drive... btw..

the other is I got to ask Dell for more time with the drive... They plan to charge $90.00.. if I don't return it...

e-,mail me and lets talk.. okay..  where are you ?,.... I'm in NYC...

Thank you..

newhawks(at)full-moon.com

Check You're E_Mail.

Update to my continued effords to recover my data... 

I bought a logic board that fits my hard drive specs over the internet..  The board arrived and I went to RadioShack to buy the torx wrench to remove the old board..   I tried the new board and wont you know it,  the same symptoms are still there...   The PC takes almost 4 minutes to start...  and the D drive does not appear in the windows Browser....   either the board I got is faulty as well or something else is wrong with the hard drive...