Main computer at home has taken a dump,,, won't even fire up. Tech yesterday said it is not the power unit, and may be the hard drive. Is there any hope of somehow getting my documents and pictures out of it ? He wasn't sure.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

will your pc post? ~~~ when you push the on button, what happens?

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1989 300ce smoke silver / brazil, in a constant state of flux ~~~

Try the hard drive in a different computer. If you dont have acess to another computer, look on craigslist. Often there are free or very low cost computers available.

If it wont boot up in a different computer, try configuring it as a slave drive.

If the drive still wont release its data, your ptions may only be a data recovery service which is quite expensive.

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1959 Gravely LI, 1963 Gravely L8, 1973 Gravely C12
1982 380SL
1978 450 SEL 6.9 euro restoration at 63% and climbing
1987 300 D
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Nothing,,, you can hear the fan running, but nothing appears on the monitor. The tech said that no response from the keyboard at all is a bad sign.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

The tech mentioned that swapping deal, and that will probably be the next move. Thanks.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

you can boot up with no hard drive, disconnect the hard drive (power plug and ide cable) and see what happens

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1989 300ce smoke silver / brazil, in a constant state of flux ~~~

Put the hard drive into a different computer, and it should pop up as the secondary drive. You may have to play with the jumper settings though.

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-Justin

91 560 SEC AMG - other dogs dd
01 Honda S2000 - dogs dd
07 MB ML320 CDI - dd
16 Lexus IS250 - wifes dd

it's automatic.

Another thing that has worked for me in the past is putting the hard drive into the freezer overnight before attempting the above.

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08 W251 R350
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79 W123 250
78 W123 280E
75 W114 280

Only do this if other methods fail first. Put the drive in a ziplock back to avoid moisture geting in. You could also try a Ubuntu boot CD to read the drive and copy things off to an external USB drive, for example. If the drive doesn't show up at all you might be toast. Try holding it at different angles. If it still doesn't work, and the data is very very important you can try getting another identical drive, from about the same time of manufacture, off of ebay. Sometimes the controller board on the bottom is what goes bad, and swapping that out can get you your data back. The board is actually very easy to swap, just a couple of screws.

-Jason

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1991 350SDL. 230,000 miles (new motor @ 150,000). Blown head gasket

Tesla Model 3. 205,000 miles. Been to 48 states!
Past: A fleet of VW TDIs.... including a V10,a Dieselgate Passat, and 2 ECOdiesels.
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2013 Fiat 500E.

Pete what OS are you using on the bad HD?

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00 E420
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(o\|/o)

PM PowerPig....

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"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

Based on the symptoms I would think the problem is the motherboard and not the hard drive. More than likely, the southbridge on the motherboard has died. The southbridge controls all I/O so neither the monitor, keyboard or drives will function.

As others have suggested, remove the drive and put it in another computer to access the data. If it is a PATA drive, try putting the jumpers on the back of the drive in the "cable select" setting before installing in the other computer so it doesn't conflict with existing drive(s). If it is a SATA drive you have no jumpers to worry about.

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Bill Wood - Retired Webmaster
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Windows XP.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

A tech is stopping today to take the hard drive out and try it on another computer,,,, hopefully that will get it done. Thanks for all the imput.

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95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

Same thing happened to us not long ago.
(Right after we realized it was pretty much time for a new computer anyway.)

So, I went and got a new one.
Along with a USB hard drive case that cost less than $10.00.

Fired up the new computer. Pulled the C and D drives out of the old one. Dropped them one at a time into the USB case, and transferred everything we needed onto the new one.

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !