External hard drive is breaking my balls.

[DallasX]

Got this piece of garbage about 2 years ago. It's a Samtack 250GB external hard drive. No problems for the first 18 months, then 6 months ago it started doing the whirring then clicking, whirring then clicking. No other notable problems though. All this time I was on Windows XP, Now I'm on Vista. As of yesterday, I can no longer transfer any files from my external to my hard drive. It transfers at 0bytes/sec, freezes when I try to do so. When I try to delete files on the external, it freezes momentarily before it finally lets me delete them. I don't really care about the hard drive, I just don't want to lose the near 200GB of music I've collected over the past 5 years.

 

[Hefemeister]

Ouch whirring and clicking are sure fire signs of a drive failing. Try to get as much info off that baby as you can right now.

 

[DallasX]

Problem is that I cannot transfer files off the hard drive as they transfer at 0bytes/sec. What can I try doing?

 

[KSoD]

Have you turned off the external drive or left it on the whole time? If you have left it on i would suggest turning it off for a day or so to let it cool off. Could be that it is starting to fail from overheating.

 

[CrazeD]

Problem is that I cannot transfer files off the hard drive as they transfer at 0bytes/sec. What can I try doing?

Freezer trick.

 

[Mirror Image]

Perfect reason why I use my external as a back up drive, there's nothing on it that not on either of the two other drives.

 

[mikesgroovin]

Yea, let is cool down first then try it again.

If that doesn't work, take it out of the external casing and use it as an internal drive.. then try it again.

If that doesn't work, let it cool down for 10 minutes and then throw it in the freezer for a bit... then try it again.

If that doesn't work, try booting it and running a level 2 or 4 scan with SpinRite.

If that doesn't work, throw it into the red bin next to the person ringing the bell at the Grocery store entrance... they collect bad hard drives.

 

[Alexinator]

I had this same problem a couple months back with an old 200GB external drive. I just ripped it out of the casing, threw it in the freezer for a couple hours, pulled it out, slapped it in as internal, and it worked for a good hour and a half, enough for me to transfer my files off of it.