HDD Clicking and Slow on Boot

[imported_blip]

In the last few days, any time I boot up in the morning, my HDD makes a loud clicking sound for ~10 sec. It then takes a long time to post and boot into Windows. After that, everything seems to be working OK.

How bad is this, and is my drive going to die soon?
My main drive is 200GB, and I also have a 250GB internal. Should I install windows on my second drive, in case I need to boot from there? Should I be copying everything over? I'm backing up my photos on an external drive, but not sure if I should copy the whole drive.

Thanks for the help!

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: blip
How bad is this

Bad.

and is my drive going to die soon?

Probably. The more you use the drive, the higher the odds that it will fail.

You are going to want to replace that drive. Install Windows on whatever other drive is appropriate. You may want to get license keys or a list of drivers from the failing drive, but I'd disconnect it ASAP so you won't damage it any more and so you can access it as a secondary drive if you find you forgot something.

 

[imported_blip]

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. Where would I find the license keys and driver list? Anything else that needs to be copied, apart from the obvious things like programs, music files, etc.?

Thanks again.

 

[Atheus]

You only need to grab the licence key if you don't have a retail box Windows with a key written on it. If you don't have this you might have an OEM install of windows - is it a Dell or similar which comes with everything preinstalled? If so you might have to jump through a few hoops.

I don't recommend you try to copy drivers and programs unless you know exactly what you want. Do you have all the install CDs for your software? If so just reinstall from scratch and get all the latest drivers from the manufacturers' websites.

Do copy all your music and documents etc.

 

[L00PY]

Some other things you might want to try are checking the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive. If it only boots on startup, you could also just try leaving it in there and no longer shutting down (use standby or hibernation and see if it behaves the same way). It'll probably still die, but it might extend its life some.

 

[imported_blip]

OK, this is weird. I have a second HDD slaved off of my main one. I'm assuming it's the master that's clicking and causing the slow boot, since it is older and it's where Windows is installed. Last night, my slave drive stopped showing up in My Computer or Device Manager. When I rebooted, it was there in the post, and I went into the BIOS, and it was listed there and I ran the auto-detect which seemed to think it was there. I opened the case, and all the cables seem to be plugged, and the slave drive is warm. WTF? Is this a result of my main drive slowly dying? It doesn't seem like something that would happen, but who knows. I'm going to try and find another IDE cable so I can plug the slave into its own IDE port. Will I have to change jumper settings? I don't think I have either HDD manual, but I would guess that most of them are similar. Thanks!
Arghh.

 

[Ausm]

YIIIKES backup ASAP Hopefully you will be lucky enough to do a backup before your HD bites the dust.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

To get your windows and office keys

http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

For the rest you are on your own, sorry.

 

[imported_blip]

Uh-oh. Wife just called and said the computer wouldn't boot, asking for a media disk. Not good. I was able to back up all my photos (about 30GB), but little else. Maybe I can talk it into booting up one last time when I get home so I can salvage some more stuff. I keep remembering more and more things that I have on there. Crap. Computers can be such a pain. But the wife did ask how much a new computer would set us back, so maybe I'll get a new toy. Perhaps I won't tell her that it's just the hard drive...

 

[imported_blip]

Here's the latest: tried to boot up tonight, and it looked like it was going into windows, then I got "Verifying DMI Port Data...Boot from CD...Boot Disk Failure, INsert System Disk". I tried to run CHKDSK, but it took forever so I rebooted. I started to reinstall Windows, thinking it would be to my slave drive. It found my main drive (C and my ipod, but not my slave drive. So I told it to install on C:, and it said Windows was already installed and reinstalling would erase everything. So I shut down, and just for kicks switched my DVD drive to IDE port 1 and my 2 HDD's to IDE 2. When booting, it started listing every Windows file it couldn't find and wouldn't boot. I rebooted, went into BIOS to try and find a way to tell it I had switched IDE ports, but didn't see anything that made sense. I exited, and it went into Windows, thus I am able to post.
Any new ideas? Is this just symptoms of a dying disk? Also, if a slave drive is having problems, will it affect the master on the same IDE cable? As I booted up, I thought for a moment that it was my slave drive clicking, but the OS is on my Master. Could the slave slow down booting considerably if it was failing?
Not sure what the hell to do. I'm just backing up what I can and ordering a new HDD.
Thanks for the continued advice.

 

[Laputa]

Your drive is dying for sure, but the point is why bother to install something on a suspected failing drive? Just put in a new drive an all the headaches will be gone. If you really wan't to find out which one is bad, connect them individually and do a fresh OS install just for the heck of it. That means another couple hours of your free time:B, I would recommend doing that only if you have the time.