western digital hdd grinding/clicking

[audiophan]

upon booting this morning my wd800 hard drive was not found and made the following noise: grinding->metallic click in a loud, quick successive pattern. no warning - it just happened. as a kick in the face, wd's website states my drives warrenty expired less than a month ago.

someone PLEASE tell me the data is recoverable and won't cost an arm and leg.

 

[OneClone]

that noise means the heads in the drive are touching the platter. and it means that your data is being scratched. Please run the Western Digital Diagnostic free tool and scan the HDD. The program will scan your hdd and tell you the reason it is making those noises. It will either PASS or FAIL.

if it fails, then your data is most likely gone. Trash the drive if so, get 2 more HDD, and do differential backups for now on. Or whatever method of backing up you feel is just.

i suggest a program called Win DLG:
Win DLG
Ver. 1.0
April, 2003
(428 KB)

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#dlgtools
i hope this helps.

/CLONE

 

[ClearToLand]

Originally posted by: audiophan...someone PLEASE tell me the data is recoverable...

Probably some of it.

Originally posted by: audiophan...and won't cost an arm and leg.

But it will be expensive!

If you REALLY need the data (and don't have any current or relatively current) backups, UNPLUG THE DRIVE and do not run it anymore. Every revolution of the heads scratching the platters is destroying data.

A Recent ($1850) Horror Story...

 

[audiophan]

the wd diagnostic is a great idea - i forgot about it. unfortunately when i attempted to run the software, it still would not detect the faulty drive. it stopped making the horrible sounds decribed above, for better or worse. the drive is for the most part the system backup drive. on a side note, all absolutely critical files are also on my primary hdd, so the extent of the loss is my enitre music collection. what a shame.

at least there are plenty of hard drive deals in the hot deals forum