Laptop HDD failed.. might it work again?

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Danith

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Oct 13, 2004
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So last week my laptop's HDD decided to do the click of death and decide to stop working. Now when I try to boot, it goes click.....click........click... A disk read-error has occured. Press Control-Alt-Delete to restart.


Is it possible that maybe after a couple reboots, or shaking the drive, or doing voodoo that it might let me boot in to windows and get a backup off of it? I don't really want to reinstall everything especially with my screwed up restore disk. Maybe I shouldn't have put off the backup I was going to make everyday until tomorrow. :p

edit: corrected error message
 
i think you may need to try the freezer method, other people here i am sure can tell you exactly what to do but you will put your HD in the freezer for like an hour then quickly try to boot it and get a backup or whatever from it.
 
When this happened to my laptop, I just left it rebooting for like a half hour and it managed to get itself going again. I'm still using it about six months later... lol.
 
Unlikely.

Once they go, generally speaking (unless we're talking about some kind of multi-million dollar company project/secret where paying a data recovery company many thousands of dollars makes sense) they are gone for good.

You could try the "freezer trick" -- put the drive in a ziploc bag in the freezer overnight, then pull it out and boot off of it immediately in hopes you can get it working again for a few minutes -- but one, I doubt it'll work as I've never had success, and two, even if it does work the chances of getting everything off of it in the period of time during which it does work are slim to none.

Sorry. I've been through this before and am well aware of how badly it sucks.
 
My laptop HDD has failed twice, each time Stellar Phoenix has been able to recover the important stuff off the disk
 
Danith said:
So last week my laptop's HDD decided to do the click of death and decide to stop working. Now when I try to boot, it goes click.....click........click... A disk read-error has occured. Press Control-Alt-Delete to restart.
Click to expand...

This sound is most likely the read/write head resetting. A possible cause for this may be a corrupted data table on the disk. Another a mechanical shift. Data recovery software may be able to recover some data. Definitely run a HDD diagnostic tool on the drive. A full (low-level) format should be able to restore this disk to working glory with some luck.
 
Thanks for the info. I'll try to find a HDD diagnostic utility, or booting up a linux live CD and see if I can access the drive from there.. if those don't work the freezer trick can't hurt :p

I really didn't have any "important" data on it, I just dont want to go through the pain of reinstalling the OS as the rescue disk it came with is for the wrong model, and last I checked the drivers for this laptop aren't actually listed under this laptop on gateways website (long story..). As it's a OEM winXP install I can't just use my XP disc either.

Oh well, lets see what happens.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
i think you may need to try the freezer method, other people here i am sure can tell you exactly what to do but you will put your HD in the freezer for like an hour then quickly try to boot it and get a backup or whatever from it.
Click to expand...

Try it, it worked for me :)

mind you, you may only be able to save a few things...
 
sumofatguy said:
Try it, it worked for me :)

mind you, you may only be able to save a few things...
Click to expand...

Yeah, generally you can only use the HDD for a few minutes after it spins up. Re-freezing only works so many times before the drive is totally shot. No time to waste on recovering anything but the most valuable data, IOW :)
 
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