Dead Hard drive advice

[Synlor]

Hey all, long time without a visit, but I figured this is the only site I occasionally visit that knows about this kind of thing. My old macbook pro hard drive died the other die, and I have been struggling to recover any bit of data I can. I have tried using dd to copy the contents to an image, but it never actually starts copying the data. When I plug in the drive it spins up for about a minute and then dies. During that minute I can get "Data Rescue II" to run a scan, but it stops scanning once it dies. It is actually reading the drive though, as I can pull off a few files in that quick time span. Unfortunately none of the useful files are at the beginning of the drive.

So does anyone have any tips? I've tried putting it in the freezer, didn't work. Really if I could find a program that allows me to pause its scan, I should be able to slowly but surely recover the files. Anyone know of any programs that do that? Finally I ordered a duplicate drive so I can swap the board, but I don't feel too confident in that endeavor.

[Quzar]

You might try repeating the process with the drive in a different physical orientation.


Try it upside down or on it's side, it could help ease stress on the arm if that's the issue.

[Zealous zerotype]

Try spinrite on it
+ to what quzar said.