Big HDD problem

[biosninja]

Hi.

I have a very big problem.

one of my 80gig hdd's decided to die on me (dam Samsung)

it all started where py pc would freeze and throw a blue screen without any text.

when I rebooted my pc gave me the following error on startup"

"S.M.A.R.T error Press F4 to continue" I continue, but the pc does not see the hdd.

Waht can I do? I cant lose the data on the disk as it has some very important work stuff on it.


edit
I have a Intel Bayfiled motherbard, P4 2.8 HT prescot chip and the HDD is a Samsung 80gig SATA drive

[nvoigt]

S.M.A.R.T., short for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology is a diagnostic method originally developed by IBM to test hard disk drives and introduced with the ATA-3 specification.

Additional Information:

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a diagnostic method originally developed by IBM that at that time referred to as "Predictive Failure Analysis". This technology was developed for IBM mainframe drives to give advanced warning of drive failures. Based on this diagnostic, Compaq announced IntelliSafeTM, which was submitted to the ATA/IDE standards committees and the resulting standard was named S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. analyzes many of the mechanical attributes; over time, some failures can be predicted by detecting if the hard disk drive is moving out of tolerance. While the S.M.A.R.T. technology can detect upcoming issues, not all hard drive failures are predictable.

Some of the Major Hard Disk Drive manufacturers now including the S.M.A.R.T Technology in their hard disk drives are IBM, Western Digital, Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate and Fujitsu

Not all hard drive failures are predictable, but by analyzing many of the mechanical attributes over time, some failures are predictable and this is what S.M.A.R.T. does. S.M.A.R.T. measures many attributes of the user's drive over time and decides if they are moving out of tolerance.

Also see our S.M.A.R.T dictionary definition for additional information and related links to this term.

Cause:

Hard disk drive is bad or is going to fail soon.

Solution:

Backup your information and contact the manufacturer of the computer or hard disk drive for replacement or additional help. In some very rare cases the S.M.A.R.T. implementation on your computer may have issues of its own and may need to be patched before replacing the hard drive.

Your HDD is failing. You can try to disable smart detection in the BIOS. If that works and you can access your disk, make a backup IMMEDIATLY. If it does not work, it's probably too late.

[biosninja]

LOL, I think it's a;ready to late...I hooked it p to my pc again....and there was no error....but the pc did not detect the drive...NOOOOOO!!!!!!

But i'll try and disable smart tonight and give it another shot.

[GanglyLamb]

Had the same problem on my laptop´s HDD, i disconnected it, plugged it into my desktop system, disabled smart and made a back up of everything, although out of the full 40 GB I lost some 2 MB - luckily some of the less important things.

Anyway good luck trying to recover your data.

[ober]

May this prove as a lesson to you... backup, backup, BACKUP!