Drive beyond help?

I have an 80GB WD drive, now connected directly to an EIDE controller.
If I boot the machine from cold, the BIOS reports that the drive is not
present; if I reboot when it's been running for a while, the BIOS
reports the presence of the drive but then reports that it failed. In
either case, the drive makes "clunking" noises before the BIOS renders
its verdict.

The files on this drive are not vitally important, but I would like to
retrieve them if possible. Any chance?

And don't anyone talk to me about backups: this *was* the backup drive
(in an external USB/Firewire enclosure) for a notebook computer: I
copied the files to the external drive, reformatted the notebook's
internal drive, but then found that the external drive was unreadable.
So much for hard disks ("They're so cheap these days; why do you still
mess around with tape?") as a backup medium: I'm going to resume backing
up across the network to a machine with a DAT tape drive.

MB

"Minnie Bannister" wrote in message

 > I have an 80GB WD drive, now connected directly to an EIDE controller.
 > If I boot the machine from cold, the BIOS reports that the drive is not
 > present; if I reboot when it's been running for a while, the BIOS
 > reports the presence of the drive but then reports that it failed. In
 > either case, the drive makes "clunking" noises before the BIOS renders
 > its verdict.
 >
 > The files on this drive are not vitally important, but I would like to
 > retrieve them if possible. Any chance?
 >
 > And don't anyone talk to me about backups: this *was* the backup drive
 > (in an external USB/Firewire enclosure) for a notebook computer: I
 > copied the files to the external drive, reformatted the notebook's
 > internal drive, but then found that the external drive was unreadable.
 > So much for hard disks ("They're so cheap these days; why do you still
 > mess around with tape?") as a backup medium: I'm going to resume backing
 > up across the network to a machine with a DAT tape drive.
 >
 > MB
I hate to say it, but if it is "clunking" and BIOS reports it dead, then it
is most likely dead. It is some serious odds that your drive would go out
right after formatting your machine. You should play the lottery.

-Chris