HDD.... dead

NeoSlicerZ

I think my beloved IBM 120GB HD has gone to the great digital graveyard in the sky, it suddenly started giving out clicky noises and everything stopped on the monitor *sniff*. I'm told freezing it is the best way to get the data off it? I intend to get a WD 200GB Caviar to replace it, any opinions on this?

Col_Loki

If your looking for performance the new Maxtor 250gb&300gb drives with 16mb cache are the best. The Hitachi are pretty fast aswell.

Have a look at www.storagereview.com for a great review of some of the drives. The WD's tend to be noisey but perform well, how much of an issue is noise? Quietest ones tend to be Samsungs & Seagates but they perform a little worse.....

Snowbat

Run IBM's Drive Fitness Test on it and see if that can paper over the cracks. (these days on Hitachi's site - follow the link).
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

If it is a Deskstar GXP, you should probably retire it as soon as possible, regardless:
http://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+deathstar

There are firmware updates for certain models that seem to prevent the problem from happening:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11323

Johnny Storm

I have read elsewhere what appeared to be reliable comments that freezing it can work. It depends whatthe actual problem is I think.