Of Hard Drives And Clicking

noobert

I have been given a HDD. This HDD, when connected to a computer makes a very loud clicking sound (uhoh) on start up.

As windows boots, the system will blue screen and crash. If the HDD is removed, the system will boot into windows fine.

I guess i should note here that this HDD has an OS installed and is partitioned, I just want to get the data off it.

Any ideas?
Is it worth trying the Freezer trick? If so, how does one go about attempting it.

Dixon

You freeze it in a freezer then try it lol
What you can also do it just replace the circuit board with another circuit board of the exact same model. By the "sounds" of it though that wouldn't really help. You made sure to check the boot order in the bios to make sure it wasn't booting from that drive right?

Also what you could do is hook it up to a harddrive enclosure and then connect it via usb, I've done that before

Thomamelas

Dixon wrote: »

You freeze it in a freezer then try it lol
What you can also do it just replace the circuit board with another circuit board of the exact same model. By the "sounds" of it though that wouldn't really help. You made sure to check the boot order in the bios to make sure it wasn't booting from that drive right?

Also what you could do is hook it up to a harddrive enclosure and then connect it via usb, I've done that before

Note, if you do the freeze trick, throw a couple of silica packets in the baggie and give them some time to suck the moisture out.

Ego

I'd boot with a live-cd and see if you can copy the files off the drive that way, alternatively set the drive as slave and put it in a working machine. If you're lucky you'll still be able to copy the files or at least critical files off, but that windows is incapable of booting seems to indicate that at least certain areas of the drive are inaccessible. If clicking is constant you probably have a track 0 failure in which case you're out of luck. But still try.

Try this before you put it in a freezer.

The freezer trick is simple, take a plastic bag, put a packet of silica in it (the stuff that comes with electronics that says 'do not eat') along with the hard drive, and freeze it for about 6 hours. Then pop it in the machine and see if it works. This, obviously, is just a temporary way to occasionally let you retrieve data. It does work sometimes.

noobert

Ego wrote: »

I'd boot with a live-cd and see if you can copy the files off the drive that way, alternatively set the drive as slave and put it in a working machine.

No go, clicks and clicks and BSOD's even when not set as the boot device.

Luckily it's not my data

Ego

Yeah sounds like a track 0 failure, the arms are missing their alignment mark and they're just smacking into the wall of the drive repeatedly, so it's never getting to a state where it's able to initialize. Glad to hear it's not your data.

zanetheinsane

Otherwise known as the "Click of Death", sorry to hear it.

1ddqd

There are services that can recover the data. All I know is that if you have a clicking drive and take it to, say, Geek Squad (who outsource the service) you're looking at well over $1,000. Some people pay for it, the data is just worth it to them, others don't.