Did my HDD just die?

**yoco** · 04.06.11, 20:29

So I was watching Top Gear show on TV. Somewhere in the middle there were commercials, and I stepd in my room, everything's working fine. After the show ended I came back into my room, I noticed PC rebooted and froze at post screen. Somehow I managed to get into windows, didn't have a clue what could be wrong. I didn't think it was a big deal, but as I was trying to copy some files from HDD to HDD(usb) something clicked inside the usb HDD and it froze. I couldn't do anything so I pressed the reset button, and I couldn't get into windows. I decided to turn off the HDD, rebooted and got into windows easily. When I turned on the HDD windows made that sound when you connected something through usb, but it didn't show anything in explorer. I can't see my usb HDD. Is there anything I could do? Of all HDDs this is the one I simply cannot let it die!!! Plz help me!

**GymTanAndLaundry** · 05.06.11, 01:40

Originally Posted by yoco

So I was watching Top Gear show on TV. Somewhere in the middle there were commercials, and I stepd in my room, everything's working fine. After the show ended I came back into my room, I noticed PC rebooted and froze at post screen. Somehow I managed to get into windows, didn't have a clue what could be wrong. I didn't think it was a big deal, but as I was trying to copy some files from HDD to HDD(usb) something clicked inside the usb HDD and it froze. I couldn't do anything so I pressed the reset button, and I couldn't get into windows. I decided to turn off the HDD, rebooted and got into windows easily. When I turned on the HDD windows made that sound when you connected something through usb, but it didn't show anything in explorer. I can't see my usb HDD. Is there anything I could do? Of all HDDs this is the one I simply cannot let it die!!! Plz help me!

Clicking normally means the parts that try to read/write cant read/write and it's fucked. Happened to my old external HDD with all my music on it :( If anyone else can offer a more technical explanation though....

**anon** · 05.06.11, 06:00

Click of death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**yoco** · 05.06.11, 10:44

Do you think there's a possibility that my files can be saved? I'm gonna go take it to service tomorrow.

And is there any good software that I can check all my other HDD for bad sectors/block?

**mammamia11** · 05.06.11, 12:40

yes you can save your files, your hdd is kinda dead if u hear that clicking sound, leave it to service if you want a profetional recovery or u can do it yourself but it will not be as good as they do it and if you have bad luck some files will be missing

**GymTanAndLaundry** · 05.06.11, 14:01

A friend of mines drive started clicking (and then stopped clicking and began working again) about a month ago. The drive lasted until now, and now all the files she has on the drive (about 1TB's worth) have all corrupted. The drive is being detected by the OS and it's making weird noise (not clicking) but everything she tries to click/access will not open/read so it seems this time she's lost absolutely everything. ADVISE: Don't fret, act quickly to avoid data loss.... the longer you take to do something about it the higher your chances of data loss, it would seem. Again, sorry my only help is anecdotal.

**takomania** · 05.06.11, 17:05

if you're going/willing to pay for some white room workers to fix your drive, don't bother reading the rest of this post.

if you can't afford a couple of thousand, then read on, because you've got nothing to lose.

i have done the following 'rescue' on 20-30 drives over the last 15 years - the results are mixed, but i've never come away empty handed.

if a drive is clicking, it's usually as a result of heat coupled with general crapness (external drives today are manufactured at a low standard in comparison to their capacity - something i could write a million pages on, but won't).

the clicking is the head actuator not being able to align due to heat swell - nothing more nothing less. imagine you had a record player on which the stylus swelled up to the size of a tennis ball every time you turned it on - in layman's terms, it's a bit like that.

soooooooooo.....

(and no, i'm not completely nuts)

crack open the casing and remove the hdd itself. it should be easy - you're gonna invalidate your warranty, but as a toss up between that and data loss, there's no competition. if you take the drive to a white room for data recovery, they're gonna crack it open anyway, so you'd be in the same position.

look and take note how the drive plugs into the connectors within the casing - you're going to be replugging it later on, and when you do, time will be a factor.

take the hdd and get a couple of small plastic bags - the kind you'd put sandwiches in for lunch.

if they have no holes in them, punch a few holes through one of the bags using a pen or pencil (small holes basically)

put the hdd into the bag and tie a knot in the bag

put the first bag into the second bag - no need to tie a knot in the second bag - then put it into the freezer. yes, the freezer. preferably not under your dripping ice cube tray

leave it there for 2 or 3 hours.

power up your computer - when you're ready to go, grab the drive from the freezer, tear the bags off, plug the drive into the original housing and it should work.

you're gonna have about 20 minutes before it begins to click again, so start copying. don't mess around picking photos or reading individual files - just get them off the drive. if you're running out of time and don't think you'll be able to do everything in one hit, safely remove the drive from your os before it starts clicking continuously again.

rinse, repeat.

basically, the low temperatures cause the head actuator to constrict, minimising the drift across the platters, enabling data to be read. as the drive warms up, drift occurs, hand in hand with an increased chance of crc errors, leading to full on read write errors leading to the inability to read anything from the drive. cool things down again and you get another shot, providing physical defections on the head have not been made worse by leaving the drive run in a faulty state for a prolonged amount of time.

laugh if you want, but it does work, i've used this exactly technique many times and always been able to a portion if not all of my data.

oh, you mentioned something about bad drive sectors.

hdd regenerator made by dposoft.net will physically restore bad sectors on a drive.

that's not marketing garbage either. it works. it's just a shame that a lot of people don't understand how magnetic recording mediums work, so they write things off as myth.

it's doubtful your clicking is down to bad sectors though...

that's my spin on the freezer technique. you can google the hdd in the freezer technique and no doubt find a billion guides as well as a billion naysayers who don't know jack about computers.

but what i've written above is what i've personally used to recover data from 'dead' hdds over the years.

maybe you'll find a better guide, maybe you won't believe any of it, maybe you have enough cash to get some white room pros to do it the proper way for you,

either way, i wish you luck. data loss sucks.

*takomania looks down at his 16tb raid 10 array.

**lertsy** · 05.06.11, 17:07

You could always try to plug it in manually..

**takomania** · 05.06.11, 17:10

^if it's a lacie drive, DEFINITELY try that first. remove it from the housing and either put it into another enclosure or plug it straight into the machine...

**anon** · 05.06.11, 20:52

I assure you takomania isn't "talking shit". I've also read about the drive freezing technique some years ago, and how it's known to work. But you have to be fast.

My hardware knowledge is limited so I wasn't sure it would do the trick when you're having the click of death, but do try that out.

**lertsy** · 05.06.11, 21:08

Originally Posted by anon

But you have to be fast.

That's something to have in mind. The more time that flies by, the more difficult it become to recover data. Sadly =P

**yoco** · 06.06.11, 00:12

takomania, thnx for this huge post! Like I said, I'm gonna take it to service tomorrow and see what they'll say. One thing got me worried now. Yesterday the disk was working, you could fell it if I put my hand on it, and the blue light was on. But when I completely turned it off, disconnected, waited a few minutes, and when I turned it back on, absolutely nothing happened. Like it had no power. This scares me the most.

**takomania** · 06.06.11, 10:38

you might be lucky - it may just be the main interface board within the enclosure that has died (very common). if it is that, then removing the drive from the enclosure and plugging it either directly into the computer or into another usb enclosure would eradicate the problem completely - see what 'the pros' say though - if it's a proper white room that they work in, they could perform wonders (for a price)...