Hard drive died :(

[hapoo]

So i was walking to class when my Creative Zen Mp3 player slipped and fell on the ground. It was in its case so it looked completely fine, but the hard drive died :(
Now as far as the hardware goes, i couldn't care less. But I don't have a backup of the music i had on there!! I honestly doubt this is anything i can fix myself since i don't have a clean room to mess around with the hard drive. I also can't afford to send it to a data recovery place, so i'm kinda screwed.
As far as the damage the hard drive has. I don't hear it spinning, I do hear the head(s) moving (It makes a clicking noise, like when its accessing something). I also hear something lose in there when i shake it.

Do you guys have any thoughts or suggestions?

[sbp]

*moment of silence*

[hapoo]

<Hapoo in the operating room>
hard drives going under the knife, I'm hoping for the best
*Crosses fingers*

[hapoo]

OK, my heart is beating like its about to pop out of my chest!

I pulled my hair back, put on some latex gloves and popped open the drive.
I have heard cases where when a hard drive falls, its head gets stuck on the platter, so i crossed my fingers and opped this was the case.

I opened up the drive and noticed that THE HEAD WAS STUCK TO THE PLATTER!! I gentily moved it back to its "home" position. Also, that rattling noise was bothering me so i tilted the drive to see if could see anything move... A piece just fell out, I had no idea where it was supposed to go so i just left it out (I hate it when i put something back together and end up with extra pieces)

After the accident whenever I booted the ZEN it would default to its "rescue menu" where it lets you reformat the drive, reload the OS, etc. I was hoping when i put the sucker back together it wouldn't do that and go back to the normal menu where you can play songs.

So I put the lid back on and screwed one of the screws back in. I powered up the ZEN and...





IT STARTED SPINNING!!! I ran and got my headphones and plugged them in and IT WAS PLAYING BACK!! :D

I turned it off, ran to my desktop and cleared 16 gigs so i could make a backup. I'm currently a tenth of the way through the transfer and I just pray it all gets dumped correctly.


So much drama for one night! And on top of all of this, I have a final tomorrow and friday.

[hapoo]

I got a little more than half the music off and It started giving errors. I'm hoping its because the unit overheated and not because of a hard drive problem. Since I was transfering in alphabetical order and not in the order the data was writen i somehow doubt its a hard drive problem. I turned it off. Maybe tomorrow i'll retry transfering the rest. Getting as much as i have so far is a miracle, lets see how far i can push my luck.

[kimchicowboy]

lucky you. the DD decoder for my klipsch GMX fell to the ground while i was moving and it's all busted. klipsch will replace it for freakin $100 before taxes and s&h. the whole thing cost me $140 shipped from amazon. bah.

[hapoo]

Well, besides one song (Missy Eliott - Gossip Folk) I got ALL the unprotected files off the drive!! The songs that came with the player are all copy protected so you can't copy them off. I couldn't be more successful

I'm honestly shocked and amazed at my luck. Thousands of files and hours were hanging on a thread.

Now, I can either get a new drive for this sucker or get a new unit all together.

[ArkiStan]

Hapoo MD, sir. I believe Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot is a more than elligible lamb to be sacrificed for the sake of a successful surgury.

[hapoo]

Yeah, i would have killed a truck load of her to get them back. Since last night i've been using the zen as usual, and it hasn't given me any problems even though its missing an appendix err part. The thing is, I doubt the would put a part in the hard drive unless it served a purpose, the fact that it works without it kinda troubles me.

[ArkiStan]

One Missy Elliot file was missing. You end up with an extra part out of nowhere.... My best guess would be that the piece is a solidified remnant of the lost Missy Elliot file.