Critical HDD problem

[n3iL]

Hello,
I have 3 Hard Drives, including this one:
80GB PATA - Windows 7 installed
250GB PATA - "Problem One"
250GB SATA

My 250GB PATA HDD stopped working around a month ago. It had worked fine for over 5-6 years. Suddenly, one day it did not allow me to access the partitions in my 250GB PATA drive. So, I ran a Disk-Check for all the 4 partitions on that drive. It took its time and after that everything came to normal. But, after the restart, my computer just didn't start up. It just got stuck on the black screen with a small "-" on the top left corner. then i reset and accessed BIOS to see if drives are being detected. Apparently, Not. So, I did some physical troubleshooting to find what is wrong and in the end I found out that its just that drive whic is not working. The other 2 drives are working fine, but when this drive is connected with them, it just won't start up.
Tried a lot of things from the internet. Nothing worked so far.
A friend suggested me this site, so here I am.
Could me help me?
I have all my important stuff in this drive.
Please?

 

[jsc]

Welcome to the forums.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the hard drive has died. About the only inexpensive thing you can try is to change IDE data cables.

You can also try the drive in another computer. If that works, download your data fast.

 

[n3iL]

Welcome to the forums.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the hard drive has died. About the only inexpensive thing you can try is to change IDE data cables.

You can also try the drive in another computer. If that works, download your data fast.

Thank You for your time. Appreciate that.

I've tried changing the IDE cable as well when I did the Physical Troubleshooting as I said earlier.

As my drive is already out of warranty, so I want to see for myself if the green chip is burnt or not because we had a lot of power tripping in our area around those days. Should I ?

 

[fzabkar]

Does the drive still spin up? If not, then the most likely problem is a board fault.

 

[geofelt]

There are companies that can recover data from a failed hard drive. It will be very expensive. If your data is irreplaceable and that important, it is probably the only way to get it back.

If you have external backup, Buy a replacement drive, preferably a sata drive and restore to that.

If you have no backup, take this as a lesson learned, and back up your important data to an external device with regularity.

 

[n3iL]

Does the drive still spin up? If not, then the most likely problem is a board fault.

I've checked that.
Sometimes it spins. Sometimes it doesn't.

 

[n3iL]

There are companies that can recover data from a failed hard drive. It will be very expensive. If your data is irreplaceable and that important, it is probably the only way to get it back.

If you have external backup, Buy a replacement drive, preferably a sata drive and restore to that.

If you have no backup, take this as a lesson learned, and back up your important data to an external device with regularity.

Thanx!
Could you name some softwares to recover data, which could be easily available on net?