HDD click of doom | What now?

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anime_dude07

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First off, let me say it's been a while since I've been on here. Sorry I've been gone so long everybody!

Now down to business: As you can read in the title I have the 'click'. *tears* I bought a pair of Seagate 7200.11 1TB drives for the build in my signature about 6-8 months ago. And it was a beautiful thing! There was disk space as far as the eye could see!

And then all of a sudden a few days ago, it started clicking on me. I've tried everything google could come up with to no avail. I've tried switching ports, power supply plugs, I've even tried freezing it and it still clicks!

At first it was just clicking and wouldn't show up in 'my computer'. Now I can't get past the Windows loading screen if it's plugged in.

So my question is... What now? I can't afford a data recovery service, but (stupid me) I didn't have any backups of any of the data on that drive (lesson learned), so it took all my music with it. Is there a way to recover the data without taking it somewhere?

Thanks in advance.
 
If you can't see the drive when connecting to another PC then the drive is shot. There are professional services out there that can recover the data but it is EXTREMELY expensive (talking 400+ dollars).

Since you don't / can't spend the money and can't pull the information off yourself I would say lesson learned. You more than likely will won't be able to get the drive back up after that. The clicking sound is the read/write head crashing which is a PHYSICAL issue with the drive, not something software can fix.

On a side note, the drives should still be under warranty so i would send them in. Others will suggest freezing them - which i've heard only works on the really old drives that had slower RPM speeds. Also, if you freeze the drive you will more than likely void the manf. warranty.
 
try using a Linux Boot-cd. Several times Linux can read things that an MS OS can't.

But this isn't the OS hard drive. It's just a storage drive. So would Linux do me any good? It boots up just fine when I unplug it, but when I put it back in it just stops at the loading screen.

I was actually thinking of finding one of those SATA - USB cables and try making the computer think it's an external, but if nobody on here thinks that could possibly fix it then I won't buy a cable I don't need.
 
MindoverMaster's advice still stands even if this is not the boot drive, he isn't saying that your Windows install is broken, just that Linux may be able to access the partition.
Even so I think you will be quite lucky to get any data back, as Lex said it's a H/W issue and there is probably not a lot you can do about it with software.
 
take the drive out of use asap till you have a new drive, then order a new one. Once you have a new one download DEFT Linux - Computer Forensics live cd it will auto mount any partitions you have then copy the data to the new drive once done toss away the old drive.

If you are having issues after that please let me know.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I was afraid of the fact that it was a physical problem and the software won't fix it. But I'm still holding out hope that the computer will look at it differently if I get the adaptor and plug it in via USB, but it's a long shot, along with my last hope before having to procure my music all over again.. how time consuming =(

***EDIT***

take the drive out of use asap till you have a new drive, then order a new one. Once you have a new one download DEFT Linux - Computer Forensics live cd it will auto mount any partitions you have then copy the data to the new drive once done toss away the old drive.

If you are having issues after that please let me know.

I have the two 1TB internals, and one of them is going bad, so there is the other drive right there =)
I won't hold much hope for it for very long, so I will still be purchasing probably a WD 1TB internal to replace the dead one since I've heard nothing but horror stories from the Seagate 1TB's.

I'll have to download this utility tonight and give it a try. I'll keep you all posted

Thanks again!
 
Ya but 6 to 8 months is WAY too early. As stated before, they should be under manf. warranty which should get you a new hard drive for free.
 
No drives are just cheep now, WD have a good reputation but most of them are now built with cost in mind rather than reliability. Even the enterprise ones are only marginally better when it comes to reliability.
 
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