HELP - Clicking HArdrive

[GByte]

My laptop fell and the it was frozen so i reset it and i hear a clicking sound. It seem to be booting up until it said 'disk read error' i tried connecting ti externally but it wont register on computer...what can i do??

 

[Muffin Man]

Click of death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On a hard disk drive, the click of death refers to a similar phenomenon, generally a read/write error during a seek. If the hard disk has a hard error (a hardware failure that cannot be undone by rebooting), or servomechanism failure, the head actuator will buzz and click as the drive tries to recalibrate to recover from the error. In most cases, the defect is due to physical abuse or a manufacturing error. The cause of the read/write errors is often due to the failure of the read/write heads' preamplifier, a small chip usually found soldered to the flexible cable on the actuator of modern hard drives.

as far as i know, there's not much, if anything you can do.

i'm not all too familiar with this symptom though, so stick around and see what others say.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

The hard drive is dead, you'll need to get a replacement. As for recovering the data you can try putting the drive in the freezer (put it in a plastic bag so it doesn't get wet). This is a method I've heard some success stories about but nothing is guaranteed, when my old laptop drive failed I tried it and didn't get anywhere but I had already backed it up. If the freezer trick does work you will probably only have a limited time to get the data off before it stops working so copy quickly and copy the most important stuff first. Programs and the operating system aren't important, they can be recovered by CD's or by re-downloading, just get personal documents and important files first.

If the drive does work on the external PC and you get a new drive, you can use GParted (on the Ubuntu Linux live CD or otherwise) or a similar utility to copy the partition from the old drive to the new one (the new drive has to be the same size or larger than the old one). This keeps everything just the way it was on the new drive so you can simply plug it in and go on like nothing happened, but this is only if the old drive can handle copying all the data without failing.

If it is constantly clicking when powered on then it is dead, the freezer trick may work but other than that it's dead. If the data is critically important and you're willing to fork out money you can send it to a data recovery service but I would only consider that if it was a business drive or had very important files on it. It depends on how much you're willing to give for the drive to be recovered.

 

[MindoverMaster]

As said above, your HDD is seeing the last of its days. Backup and move on.

 

[GByte]

I guess i had to hear it form someone else to finally believe its true..but what hurts the most is that i only had the drive for a little over a month..but ill try the different methods and hopefully i can retrieve the data..thanks nonetheless

 

[MindoverMaster]

I received some HDDs that were DOA. It happens.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If you've only had it for a month, back up anything important and get it replaced. Drives usually have a pretty decent warranty (at least 1 year) and they don't need to know about the little incident with the laptop. Just say the drive died and they'll probably give you a new one (they won't recover your data though). It's worth a try at very least, if anything they won't honor the warranty but the click of death can happen to DOA drives that were damaged in shipping or just plain defective.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Fill out a RMA form from the manufacturer of the HDD. Plug in the serial code, tell what's wrong, and they'll either ask for yours or plainly give you a new one. I had to RMA HDDs, RAM and Mouses. Always got swift and easy service.