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My HDD just had very very loud clicking

M

MobiusPizza

Platinum Member
I have a PC60 Lian-Li case. The HDD mount unit is removable from the case. Every week I have to remove my two other WD HDD from my Desktop and bring them to college. The removeable rack was so useful I do this often.

This morning I removed the WD HDD. The Maxtor HDD remaining serves the OS drive. Maybe I was a bit rude sliding the unit in. When booting up the PC afterwards, no problem until after BIOS POST "Verifying DMI Pool Data" then very loud continuous clicking can be heard. The BIOS report "Maxtor NEBULA " instead of its original "Maxtor H6150"

In a panic I shutted down the PC. Then rebooted. This time clicking started as soon as the power is on. I power it down again. Took the HDD mount unit out of the case, re-orientate the HDD so it stands its original position instead of rotated 90 degree sideways. Same thing happends.


Then I put a gentle shake on the HDD. Slot it back in. Miracle happens. No clicking. Correct name in BIOS POST. Loaded Windows. Now I am typing on it. As if nothing has happened?


May be my shake had helped the HDD read head to recover. Don't know.
I wonder how long it can still survive. I can't be bothered to check for bad sector...

I don't mind anyways. This is an O/S drive even if it fails It won't be a disaster.
 
Yep, definitely sounds like the dreaded ?click of death?. As a former IBM 75GXP owner, it?s a sound I?m all too familiar with. Looks like you have a paperweight on your hands.
 
Time to retire that drive, or at least make sure you save nothing valuable on it.
 
click of death...

The fact interests me is how it runs so smooth and normal now.
I don't think I have anything valuable on it except Windows and a bunch of programs installed.
 
Last time I heard the "death click" it was on one of those old "Bigfoot" drives before it died. My experience with these things is that many times components will "flicker out" rather than die suddenly, so hopefully you have a little bit of time to backup stuff.
 
You have a limited time before that drive expires. BACK UP ALL DATA NOW before you send it off to the data recovery labs.
 
That failure reading as "nebula" is supposed to be reversable, the firmware or manufactures area of the disk needs to be redone. PC3000 is supposed to be able to do this. Its rather expensive though. Cheaper to buy a new drive if theres no data you need.
 
Hopefully it will stay that way.

It seems thats a common failure mode (reading the maxtor factory alias intead of the real drive model), that info is stored in a special area of the hd. It can get corrupted. If its just corrupted it can be rewritten. If its a bad sector there, its pretty much over.

http://salvationdata.com/hfrpro_detail.htm

is supposed to be able to repair this problem too.

Good luck, hope it was just a fluke. If I were you Id never turn that drive off again though 🙂
 
Any time a hard drive starts making a different noise it's time to back up and chuck it ... Hard drives are precision mechanical devices and if something changes to trigger different sounds you can bet it's changed for the worse and will soon die.
 
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