Is my hard drive gone forever?

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Spetsnaz201

Limp Gawd
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Jul 11, 2006
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My 6 year old externak hard drive crashed today. I have been hearing a clicking sound from it the past couple weeks. Computer would always have trouble starting up when it was plugged in. Well today it finally crashed. I heard a loud clicking and screeching noise. It is a mechanical failure for sure.

I removed the hd from the enclosure and connected it via sata. On start up the computer went into disk check and then booted up. It doesnt get recognized by the OS. I checked in device manager, and one device shows up as "Unknown device"

Is there anything I can do besides paying $1000s to recover it. I am not definitely not paying so much money to do that. Could it be just the PCB board?
 
Gone? Yes. Anything you can do? No. The platters and heads crashed, probably because the bearings wore out. When you started to hear the clicking, it was definitely time to back up any important data if not already past time. Use CrystalDiskInfo next time or something similar to keep track of the health of your drives and backup regardless of status.
 
blkt said:
Gone? Yes. Anything you can do? No. The platters and heads crashed, probably because the bearings wore out. When you started to hear the clicking, it was definitely time to back up any important data if not already past time. Use CrystalDiskInfo next time or something similar to keep track of the health of your drives and backup regardless of status.
Click to expand...

Yeah the first time I heard clicking I could have backed it all up. Huge mistake. It kept working so I thought I would ride it out. Huge brain freeze on my part. Lesson learned.
 
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You can try pulling the top cover on it and see if the heads or platter are stuck.
If you get it to spin up, copy as much data from it as you can immediately.

Don't continue to rely on the drive if you get it going, recover what you can and then scrap it.

Worth a try, it's not like you are going to break it at this point.

.
 
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another advice in regards to HDD.. don't drop keyboards on them.. apperantly that a huge desing fault that the can die after that.

on the serious node. i would recommende to enable S.M.A.R.T. soyou at least have some kind of monitoring going on at boot and/or runtime
 
Try placing the drive in the freezer for a few hours. Then see if the computer can load it. If it does, transfer files immediately to some other location.

Long shot, but the motor/bearings could be seized up as well. Heating them with a heatgun or blow dryer could loosen the fluid enough to get it to spin (unlikely judging by your description)

Realistically, hard lesson learned. Hard drives will not last forever and you got lucky by hearing the dying symptoms of the drive before it died. You just didn't do anything about it.
 
Never trust any one disk. Have offline backups to avoid data loss. Raid mirror to minimize downtime.
 
I put the drive back in the enclosure and connected it. The computer made the sound like a usb device is connected. Hard drive is not listed among those in "my computer". However it is recognized as "WD" in device manager.

Is this a good sign that something could be done. Or should I just give up?
 
Skillz said:
Did you try freezing it?
Click to expand...

That does actually work sometimes, depending on what happened to the drive.

Seal the drive in a plastic zip lock bag with no air in it first.
Have a soft clean cloth nearby to wipe off the condensation when you pull it out of the freezer into the warm air.


>>Is this a good sign that something could be done. Or should I just give up?

It's good that the drive is recognized, but it can still have a mechanical problem.


.
 
Spartacus said:
That does actually work sometimes, depending on what happened to the drive.

Seal the drive in a plastic zip lock bag with no air in it first.
Have a soft clean cloth nearby to wipe off the condensation when you pull it out of the freezer into the warm air.


>>Is this a good sign that something could be done. Or should I just give up?

It's good that the drive is recognized, but it can still have a mechanical problem.


.
Click to expand...


What can I try doing if it's not showing up as a hard drive in my computer? It shows up as "WD" in device manager. No model number, as hard drives usually show up as.
 
Hope you didn't have anything critical on there. Sounds like it's a brick.

How good are your backups?
 
if the data is not valuble but you just hope to get it back not NEED it back, you can pop the top and see if you can get the arm moving. if you NEED the data, send it to a lab.
 
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