[M. Peach]

I remember one time my hard drive crashed and it wouldn't even reboot. I took it to some computer guru - he tried to boot it a few times, while stroking his long beard.

He then banged the computer a few times and it booted right up. He then said that will be fifty bucks. He said my hard drive is about to crash for good so I better back up.

Try banging on the hard drive a few times. It has worked for me twice after that throughout the years.


P.S. Let me know if it works.

[Cicero]

I had the same experience with an old Gateway computer running Windows 3.11. Every once in a while it would say it couldn't find the C drive. I would give it a sharp slap or two on the right side of the case, reboot, and it would come up fine.

I assume it was a mechanical problem, something loose somewhere, but I couldn't find where the problem was, and the computer at that point was too old to be worth upgrading.

[txguy426]

OhhHHhh the computer Guru used the 'ol calibrated SMACK ..! Do not try this at home. You have to be a trained professional to use the Smack or the Calibrated DROP technique!! *ducking*

[CyberCowboy777]

Banging works great for a stuck spindle.

I have rescued data with that approach, though I generally will knock it with the butt of the screw driver.

[Edgewood Pilot]

One of my computer guru friends stuck his hard drive into a freezer and cold soaked it under the premise that the bearing was acting up. After several hours he took it out. It spun up and he was able to recover his data.

My hard drive was making strange sounds for a long time. When it died, I cold soaked it too. Unfortuately, it failed to boot up. I popped the cover off the hard drive and looked in.

One of six read/write heads had come off.

[SamAdams76]

Usually I can get my hard drive going by dropping it out my second story window onto the driveway. But one time, my hard drive was especially stubborn. No matter how many times I threw it out the window onto the driveway, it still refused to boot up. So I drove to Boston and climbed the Bunker Hill monument all the way to the top and threw it off of there. But damn, I missed the pavement and it landed on the grass instead. So I had to hike all the way back down and waste a half hour trying to find it again. Once I located it, I had to walk all the way up the stairs (about 500 of them) and throw it again. My legs felt like rubber. But this time my aim was good and it hit the pavement below, although I almost hit an old lady (and a lawsuit). This time, the hard drive fired right up.

But wouldn't you know it, about six months later, the darn thing froze up again! I wasn't going to mess around this time so I went to the top of the Prudential Tower (about 52 stories up) and flung it into Boylston Street, about 600 feet below. However, by the time I got back down there, it was gone. Somebody had stolen it! So somewhere in the Boston area, there is a thief with a hard drive that contains all my personal stuff and about 40 gigs of my favorite MP3s. What a bummer.