Hard drive has started clicking and stopping booting.

Syth

Seems pressing stop after clicking submit thread does actually submit the thread. Oops sorry. I had forgot to put in my make of harddrive, see the other threaad for that. This thread can be deleted.


Right, seems my harddrive is fscked. Turned on my PC and it started clicking after the bios's 'eyerything is connected' beep. It froze at the BIOS's splash screen. It wouldn't even start booting or loooking at the CD to see if it can boot of there. When I disconnected the harddrive's power and IDE cable, it booted fine off a CD (ah Knoppix, saved my life so often). With the power in and the IDE out, it booted off the CD but made the clicking noise again. With the power and IDE in, it froze when trying to boot.

I got my harddrive new 8 months ago, and haven't taken it out (or even unplugged) till today. My PC has been pretty immobile. About 2 weeks ago it seemed like one of my partitions was fscked and I needed to run fsck (file system check) on it. About a week ago my other partition said it needed fixing. I ran fsck on both at the time and it said it fixed the errors/copyed stuff all over the place, things seemed to work for the while. Then this.

Is there anything I can do on this end to try to investigate, or should I just email the shop about it?

MrFitt

By the sounds of things it sounds fecked. A clicking harddrive is always a bad platter or read head!!!

Is it detected in your Bios screen,( F2 or Delete Key on Bootup)? If not then try reseating ide connector and power, all else fails and you have the resources try connecting it as a secondary drive to see if Windows XP detects it.

All the best

Syth

No I can't get to the BIOS bootup menu with the harddrive connected. Unplugging it from everything and replugging it hasn't helped. I don't have another harddrive to test it on, but by using knoppix I can get some measure of a system working, if I then plug in the harddrive and try to read from it I get a whole lot of IO errors.

snappieT

Yeah, the actual circuitry of the HD seems to have been fecked...

Try putting the drive in a sealed plastic bag, freezer for 4 hours. You should get about 20 minutes of spin off it to copy any files you need from it.

Syth

snapscan1212p wrote:

Yeah, the actual circuitry of the HD seems to have been fecked...

Try putting the drive in a sealed plastic bag, freezer for 4 hours. You should get about 20 minutes of spin off it to copy any files you need from it.

You can do that? A freezer bag would do, right? Anything special I need to know?

I want to return this to the shop I got it from (harddrives should last more than 8 months), would sticking it in the freezer in anyway jeapardise getting a refund/replacement?

julius

Syth wrote:

You can do that? A freezer bag would do, right? Anything special I need to know?

I want to return this to the shop I got it from (harddrives should last more than 8 months), would sticking it in the freezer in anyway jeapardise getting a refund/replacement?

Dont fcuk around with the drive as its clearly still under warrranty!!!!

Most manufacturers offer a 1 year warranty with Seagate offering longer on some of their drives.

Throwing it into a freezer is the last resort on a hardrive drive about to die.....think of a mini type of superconductor.

Get in contact with the shop you got it from and get them to act as a go between.
It will take a couple of weeks to either get a replacement or have it fixed(unlikely).

The same happened to me with a 200GB maxtor that I got from komplett.ie.
Arrogant at the beginning but I flooded them with S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic data to prove my point.

Do some smart tests on it as this will be the first test done by the returns technician.
If there are no errors on S.M.A.R.T. then its not defect in the eyes of the harddrive manufacturer!!!

Syth

Well when it's plugged in it clicks loudly and prevents the PC from booting, when plugging it in after boot, I get IO errors. Hopefully anyone looking at it will know it's fscked.

snappieT

If he returns it to the shop, he'll lose all the data.

The only thing to ensure in the Freezer is that absolutely no moisture gets in, and it doesn't get squished.

Giblet

Yeah I remember my HDD started to do that. Just stopped working after clicking noisly. Left it alone for a day, never happened again. Still using that HDD 2 years later.