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hard drive failure?

M

m3avrck

n00b
Joined
Oct 2, 2003
Messages
37
So after a great night of sleeping I walk over to me computer and move the mouse to wake it back up. I log in and then I start hearing this scratching sound where the hard drive is and the mouse is barely moving and the screen isn't showing up (running WinXP). I'm like ok, the system is hanging, I'll just restart.

I restart the computer and it say's disk A:\ isn't accessible for booting. Strange, there is no disk in the drive. I try rebooting but same issue. I disable the floppy disk drive in the BIOS but same problem still. So I do the next logical thing and actually unplug the floppy disk drive and then reboot. Ok, no more A:\ error, but now the WinXP logo just hangs, nothing is working. I try rebooting into safe mode, but as it is listing all of the partions and files to loads it just stops half way through.

So I can't get WinXP to load at all and there is this scratching sound on the hard drive everytime I turn on my computer.

Has a part of the hard drive failed? Currently I put in the WinXP disc and have chkdsk running to see if that can fix anything, but right now I have my doubts. Luckily I did back up my data a few days ago so I won't lose anything but this is just frustrating.

Any ideas on what to do or how to fix this? Seems like it just crashed overnight or I have a superbly bad virus (despite running Nav 2002 and ZoneAlarm). Thanks!
 
that's what it sounds like... i have to applaud you for actually backing your data up. ;)

can you boot to safe mode?
 
Yeah I had a feeling before I left for vacation to backup my data just in case. Came back yesterday, worked fine, then today, nothing.

Nope, cannot boot into safe mode. It starts to load all of the files then it just stops half through, like it can't find/access the other files.
 
And oh yea, one more thing, this summer will be the 4th year I've had the hard drive.

I'm assuming newer hard drives should be lasting longer than 4 years? Or maybe a general rule start to watch out after year 3?
 
So currently I have chkdsk running but it's only at 75%. If this doesn't work, could possible reinstalling WinXP (since I can boot to this part) work? I do have 2 partitions, C & D if that helps. Thanks.
 
Well, what you seem to have is the ood old headcrash. You don't see many of them anymore, but judging from the scratching noise it was one. Your HD is screwed, period. You might be able to get parts of it up and running, but you'd lose at least a few thousand sectors.
 
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