Its a bad Christmas when........

gandalf

........your 8 month old 120GB Western Digital HDD crashes (head failure from the sounds) on Christmas Eve.

Lost MP3s but thank god most of the photos are backed up. Lost some downloads as well.

The thing that really pisses me off is that I only starting partitioning and using this drive recently. Had to rescue the NTLDR as I had installed LILO and it tripped out because it couldn't see the drive with Linux.

Ah tis the season to be jolly !

BAH HUMBUG

Gandalf.

Repli

Unlucky..
it could have been worse tho... hmm.. no wait it couldnt ;D
Merry christmas

Gerry

I know you'll probably be too busy, but try using the tools from the manufacturers site to format the drive, and remap bad sectors. ( that is if the drive is still recognised ) Its possible that it just has some bad sectors near the boot sector + system startup files. I've rescued 2 ibm drives at this stage, ibm have an excellent program which will remap bad sectors without a format. However I suppose its unlikely that the western digital has the same problem as the ibm 60/75 GXP, where it makes clicking sounds because it doesn't know it has reached the end of disk. May be worth a try though.

maxheadroom

If the drive is at all recoverable (if you can get it recognised by the bios), getdataback is a fantastic program I've used to recover data after a format/re-partition mishap...

Website is http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm , and there's a free demo version available.

It only works for FAT or NTFS though, and you need windows to run the software.

from http://www.runtime.org/faq_gdb.htm
Q. During usage of GetDataBack I do receive a disk error, what does this mean?

A. GetDataBack is a solution for software related problems, it cannot help you with failed hardware. A disk error is a sign for a hardware problem. We recommend to stop working with the corrupted drive until you make a disk image. (Every try to access data can increase corruption !) After successfully creating an image you can use the image file as an input for GetDataBack.

gandalf

Thanks for all the advice lads. Unfortunately the drive is knackered. Used the DataLifeguard Tools from WD but the testing part just locks up and the drive is clicking alot. It is also very hot to touch so I guess theres alot of friction internally which does suggest something has gone seriously wrong mechanically.

The Bios recognises the drive intermittently but the systems locks up soon after that either enter W2k boot or just after it.

I'll be sending this back to WD on Monday by Courier.

Gandalf.

rymus

"ho... ho... ho?"

po0k

more like "hoe hoe hoe'd"

GUI

Gandalf i know ur pain..

on day 3 here trying to pro-long the life of my seagate 80gig cheetah..

2 solid years of 24/7 uptime,she never gave me trouble.
ran chkdsk thorough and she hung ..
worked backwards..
eventually win2k setup said it was 2 partitions 66gig unformatted and a 10gig corruput partition..

using tools such as partition magic..
seagate tools (complements gerry :-)
chkdsk /p chkdsk /f

and ive kept all my 70gigs of data completely intact :-))))
drive is fully recognised and
ive got it down to "Partition improperly dismounted errors"

if i get this solved..
it will be an image,
full format of file system,removal of file system
and full thorough marking of bad sectors..
then creation of new file system

i agree Gandalf..
it is the session to be ****en jolly

what have i leart u say
"dont delete ur registry hive backups to make room for divx"

:-)

Saruman

Might not help but any time i come across a clicking drive, more often than not its an electrical fault and nothing wrong with the drive.. in other words replacing the pcb board (if you can on that drive) will allow you to use your drive again.
Then again it could be the drive itself too... suppose it depends... put it this way.. any Quantums that do this, it usually is a chip blown (i think a philips chip).