Crap! My hard drive clacks and doesn't respond.

[MaxDepth]

my 2 yr old Western Digital Caviar HD 450AA (45 GB) went south on me last night. I wasn't there to see it, but when I got home I had a BSOD. While rebooting, the arnmature made a clacking sound constantly while the BIOS tried (and failed) to detect the HD.

I know the sound is of the head sweeping back and forth across the platters. But I want to know if this could be fixed or do I have to go to a specialist to retrieve the data on the disks?

I'm googling now to see if I can answer this on my own.

(took me 12 hours to pull one of my spare 2.5 GB drives out and install the necessaries to get me back online.)

 

[compudog]

Tough break. There are data recovery places out there, but they are expensive. Good Luck!

 

[lenknermj]

TRY THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK!

I've been fixing PC's for about 8 years now, and we have a few secret techniques for getting failed drives to work long enough to pull the data off them. Have a spare drive with enough space available.

Take your crashing hard drive, and seal it TIGHTLY in a freezer safe bag. Put it in your freezer for about 20-30 minutes, until everything inside is good and cold.

Remove it from the freezer, and give it a good, solid slam against the floor. MAKE SURE YOU HIT IT FLAT AND SQUARE TO THE SURFACE!!!

Quickly install it into a PC with a working drive installed. Time is of the essence, so work quickly. Boot the machine, and attempt to copy (if the clacking is gone). Having a strong cooling fan drawing air across the drive will prolong the time before it fails again (which it most likely will do within 30 minutes)

Two notes about this 50/50 procedure.

1. Neither freezing the drive nor slamming it will do damage to the drive. (Providing you're not playing Godzilla, and pretending the drive is a Toyota....slam it, but don't go crazy).

2. You do have a slight risk of introducting moisture to the drive when it begins to heat up again...this is why we always sealed it tightly in a freezer safe bag (to prevent moisture from entering the drive). Even one droplet of condensation can cause the head to bounce on the platter, causing nicks, and therefore, damaged surfaces...ie TOTAL failure of those sectors damaged.

*** REMEMBER, this is a last-ditch effort. Do not do this is you have critical data on the drive, and are willing to pay $500+ to have it professionally reclaimed. Do this ONLY if you are willing to take the chance of never getting the data back.

Good luck! =)

- Mark

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Sounds like yet another (Western Digital's version of the)"Click of death"

I havnt heard of many people having luck ever recovering data from a WD drive failure. I had a friend that had the same problem, when we finally gave up and opened up the HDD case, the platters were all scratched up. I don't mean to sound negative or anything, but it doesnt look good. (Google "Western Digital click of death" if you want some more horror stories)

 

[SuperPickle]

Originally posted by: lenknermj
TRY THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! .....

That's gotta be one of the strangest things I've heard. I'm not doubting you, but what is the theory behind both the freezing and slamming? I'm intregued....

 

[KingofFah]

Ummm, never heard about the slamming part, but the freezer trick has been used before to give you a few minutes of life to get everything important off the drive.

 

[lenknermj]

Originally posted by: basilisk420
[
That's gotta be one of the strangest things I've heard. I'm not doubting you, but what is the theory behind both the freezing and slamming? I'm intregued....

I agree...it is strange. And to be perfectly honest with you, the idea was handed down to me. I really don't know of the theory...all I know is that I've done it before with all brands of drives, and about half the time, it works...

The most important tool in any techs bag is a hammer....go figure.

 

[skyking]

Another very long shot is to find another drive, with the exact same controller, and swap controllers. It is a bit of work, and if the mechanicals are hosed, it will do nothing.

 

[MaxDepth]

Originally posted by: skyking
Another very long shot is to find another drive, with the exact same controller, and swap controllers. It is a bit of work, and if the mechanicals are hosed, it will do nothing.

yup. that is what I am figuring. although the cheapest identical HD online is around $118 (discontinued drive). I wonder if there is a place that I could just pick up the controller. It'll probably void my warranty to try.

 

[skyking]

Yes, if you have a 3 year warranty, you'll be out of luck.
It depends on whether the data is worth more than 70$ or so, the replacement cost of a similar-size drive.
I believe you can put the word out on various forums, and buy a used one for around 60$ or so, if you have the time.
beats the heck out of paying 110$

 

[BZ]

I had what I thought was the western click of death on my firewire drive (WD60) - It wouldn't spin up, clicked repeatedly etc. I turned it off for 2 weeks waiting for my new drive to arrive - tried again, still no spin - then I removed the firewire case, plugged it in to IDE, and it worked! I got all the data off.

Now I wonder if I still need to throw out the drive (diagnostics say its fine!)

From everything I've read, getting a clicking drive back to live is so unlikely that I think it must be the firewire case??? Any thoughts?

(I also posted this story Here )