Any hope for my Amiga's hard disk?

[Nagromme]

Help! My Amiga troubleshooting skills are rusty from years of disuse!

I turn on my Amiga 3000 about every three months, and it's always worked fine--until this time: it doesn't recognize the internal hard disk.

The HD light comes on for half a second on power up--twice. And along with that are two little frog-like whir sounds (nothing too alarming, to my ear) from the HD. Then three brief flickers, and then the Amiga gives up and asks for a floppy.

Booting from floppy (which works fine), I expected to see DH0:BAD and an error requester or something--but I didn't.

HDToolbox checks the SCSI addresses and reports "No drives attached to system." Dredging up some CLI commands out of the cobwebs, I typed "assign" into the shell and saw nothing that looked like a hard disk.

I'm running Kickstart 2.0 and have Workbench 2.1 on floppy and on the HD. And dozens of other disk too--I could even boot to an older Kickstart on floppy if I wanted.

Is there any hope? Any apps I should try? (I think I have DiskSalvage someplace, but I don't know if it can be used if the device is not even recognized.)

What would make a hard disk give a couple sounds and flashes and then give up?

Thanks in advance for any tests/troubleshooting tips. I have a hard disk full of old projects, and I fear the worst.

(And if it's just plain dead... can you boot an Amiga from an external SCSI drive? I might have a backup on Jaz!)

[Amiga4k]

Suggestions and questions for you. All require an OPEN case as minimum.

(1) Check the SCSI cable connections? Was it loose? Re-boot!

In the past, and in an emergency, this can work.
(2) Use a rubber mallet, or rubber handle on a hammer. Tap on the drive's center AS it powers up. Does the drive spin and whirl? Any repeating clicks? Did it boot-up? If so, copy files, as this is NOT a fix.

(3) remove drive. Put in refrigerator for 24 hours. Re-install drive, and re-boot. (not a fix, and if it works, may work only 2 hours).

The jaz was not set up as a boot drive, but you can boot from the workbench disk, with the jaz connected. The jaz icons should appear on screen after you toggle "backdrop" from the workbench screen.

As I do not drop-by that often, you can email me, if needed.