Hard Drive died / dying...

[orion23]

Hi!

My external HD, my book 500GB made some clicking noises last night and is not recognized in windows anymore.

I plug it in a different computer and it still makes the clicking noises, but windows detects it and install it as an external mass storage device. However, it is not listed in my computer and under "computer managment" it says that the disk needs to be initialized....I tried to initialize it, but then it gives me an I/O error...

Do I have any options here....

 

[masteryoda34]

You can try taking the hard drive out of the enclosure and hooking it up to a PC. Sounds like its on its last legs.

 

[Denithor]

Do you have any data that you need to recover before it dies completely? You can try the old freezer trick - put it in the freezer overnight in a ziplock bag. When ready to recover data, take it out, plug in a long USB cable, put back in the freezer and connect to a laptop. Try to pull whatever you can off it.

And you can do this with it still in the external enclosure, you will have to run power into the freezer as well.

 

[orion23]

Will try this...

Thanks for the tip!