Hi Gang,can any of you give me some examples of HDD failures please, as I think that I may have one on the main PC, but I'm not sure.whats happened is this, as you know there are sometimes warnings, but then again, sometimes there are none.I came home from work, switched on the PC and nothing, the HDD activity light illuminates for a few seconds, but not as long as usual, and definitely not long enough to be loading anything such as windows etc.I have tried re-setting the CMOS etc, but no joy.I'm not getting any warning bleeps etc from the MOBO, I have no idea whats happened, but I cringe at all the data that will be lost if it has gone south.I do back, but haven't for a short while, funnily enough, I was only thinking of backing up yesterday, but as usual, you always think there will be more time.so, do any of you have any suggestions at all.I know some people have managed to get the data back off a drive somehow, some have even bought an identical drive and swapped out the internal board and made it work again without losing anything at all.I appreciate any suggestions guy's, it's all of our worst nightmares I think.Thanks,

Steve,From your description it does not sound good. Have you tried to boot again since? If so what has happened? Have you had any warning signs of drive failure in recent weeks? Did S.M.A.R.T report anything in Bios? Any bad sectors? Did you get any disk warnings in event viewer? Did you notice general sluggish drive speed. There are usually signs leading up to drive failure. I found my drive would only boot 2nd or 3rd time of asking, was OK for 3 or 4 months and then quickly went downhill before completely dying.I believe you are right in that drive dara can be recovered but am not placd to advise any further than that.The only other thing I cold perhaps suggest (if you happen to have another spare drive lying aound and an external USB case) is to replace the old drive with the spare one, install Windows on the new drive. Then put the old drive in the external case and see if you can access the files on the drive via a USB port. Obviously it is not the same, but at least you could save your data elsewhere. It worked for me when my drive refused to boot.Good luck.Scratch1964