Tick Tick in my HDD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter R.Padmakumar
  • Start date Start date
R

R.Padmakumar

Hi,
My 8GB Samsung Hard Disk is 5 years old. I am having Windows 2000Pro.
Yesterday, when I tred to boot my PC, i heard the tick-tick.. sound
followed by the message of harddisk failure. I restarted and tried to
auto detect hard disk from setup after pressing the <DEL> key (F2 in
some PCs). It is not detecting the HDD. I tried in manually setting
the parameters for HD and it also failed. I realized that some thing
is very serious in my HDD and started to hear the hard disk sound with
my ear very very close to the hard disk surface. I got the following
observation:
1. mild sound of disk rotation startup and speedup
2. the strong tick-tick (some times trick-trick or trilck-trilck)
sound.
3. mild sound of disk rotation slowing down.
these three sounds repeat and repeat.. this very unusual.

What can be the possible problem in my hard drive.. Is it in a dead
condition.. can ti be recovered or can the data inside recovered?
Please help me

Yours
R.Padmakumar
 
R.Padmakumar said:
Hi,
My 8GB Samsung Hard Disk is 5 years old. I am having Windows 2000Pro.
Yesterday, when I tred to boot my PC, i heard the tick-tick.. sound
followed by the message of harddisk failure. I restarted and tried to
auto detect hard disk from setup after pressing the <DEL> key (F2 in
some PCs). It is not detecting the HDD. I tried in manually setting
the parameters for HD and it also failed. I realized that some thing
is very serious in my HDD and started to hear the hard disk sound with
my ear very very close to the hard disk surface. I got the following
observation:
1. mild sound of disk rotation startup and speedup
2. the strong tick-tick (some times trick-trick or trilck-trilck)
sound.
3. mild sound of disk rotation slowing down.
these three sounds repeat and repeat.. this very unusual.

What can be the possible problem in my hard drive.. Is it in a dead
condition.. can ti be recovered or can the data inside recovered?
Please help me

Yours
R.Padmakumar
Click to expand...

Sounds very dead to me. I had a similar death of an IBM drive a while back.
I managed to salvage most of the data by letting the drive cool down, boot
from a second drive, and then copy the stuff over for as long as the dying
drive was up and running, which wasn't very long. I went through this cycle
some four or five times, and I got about 75% of the data back before the
drive went completely dead.

If you can't get your drive to boot at all (this sounds stupid, but you
might buy a little time by turning it upside-down or on its side. Just make
sure to copy stuff from it as soon as you can, and pick the most important
stuff first of course), the only option would be to hand it over to
professionals, but this is VERY expensive.
 
Previously R.Padmakumar said:
Hi,
My 8GB Samsung Hard Disk is 5 years old. I am having Windows 2000Pro.
Yesterday, when I tred to boot my PC, i heard the tick-tick.. sound
followed by the message of harddisk failure. I restarted and tried to
auto detect hard disk from setup after pressing the <DEL> key (F2 in
some PCs). It is not detecting the HDD. I tried in manually setting
the parameters for HD and it also failed. I realized that some thing
is very serious in my HDD and started to hear the hard disk sound with
my ear very very close to the hard disk surface. I got the following
observation:
1. mild sound of disk rotation startup and speedup
2. the strong tick-tick (some times trick-trick or trilck-trilck)
sound.
3. mild sound of disk rotation slowing down.
these three sounds repeat and repeat.. this very unusual.
Click to expand...
What can be the possible problem in my hard drive.. Is it in a dead
condition.. can ti be recovered or can the data inside recovered?
Please help me
Click to expand...

The drive starts, tries head calibration, fails, retries, retries,
...., gives up and spins down again.

If it comes up for some time (let it cool down an hour or so
bnefore trying), you might get data off. Otherwise consider
professional data recovery.

Arno
 
DanielEKFA said:
Sounds very dead to me.
Click to expand...

ALTHOUGH -- and I wouldn't have believed this myself if it didn't just
happen to me -- by any chance, have you changed power connections on this
drive recently? Or added new hardware? Upgraded your videocard? I have an
SX4000 RAID5 array which had a dead drive. I replaced it with a new, and
two days later the new one died. That puzzled me a great deal, so I looked
into it a little more thoroughly. The interesting thing was that the three
drives that were okay were all running off two power connectors with both
SATA and PATA style plugs on them, the two drives that have died had both
been running off the same, different (PATA style only), connector that was
shared with a Y-splitter with one of my optical drives. I tried switching
power connectors, and sure enough, now the new drive that was given the
"bad" connector started to fail (same sound you're getting I think.) I
unplugged the Y-cable from the PATA-style cable and put it on the one
SATA-style cable that wasn't already split in two, and I have been running
the four drives without problems on those two SATA style power cables with
two Y-splitters since then. Turns out neither drive was dead, it was just
the power supply acting weird. I don't know how and why, because the old
school PATA style power cable works fine with the optical drive, and the
splitter is not broken. But for the heck of it, it might be worth your
while trying a different power cable. Perhaps a dead or dying capacitor
could cause this, or simply an exhausted power supply, I don't know. But
worth a shot. :)
 
DanielEKFA said:
ALTHOUGH -- and I wouldn't have believed this myself if it didn't just
happen to me -- by any chance, have you changed power connections on this
drive recently? Or added new hardware? Upgraded your videocard? I have an
SX4000 RAID5 array which had a dead drive. I replaced it with a new, and
two days later the new one died. That puzzled me a great deal, so I looked
into it a little more thoroughly. The interesting thing was that the three
drives that were okay were all running off two power connectors with both
SATA and PATA style plugs on them, the two drives that have died had both
been running off the same, different (PATA style only), connector that was
shared with a Y-splitter with one of my optical drives. I tried switching
power connectors, and sure enough, now the new drive that was given the
"bad" connector started to fail (same sound you're getting I think.) I
unplugged the Y-cable from the PATA-style cable and put it on the one
SATA-style cable that wasn't already split in two, and I have been running
the four drives without problems on those two SATA style power cables with
two Y-splitters since then. Turns out neither drive was dead, it was just
the power supply acting weird. I don't know how and why, because the old
school PATA style power cable works fine with the optical drive, and the
splitter is not broken. But for the heck of it, it might be worth your
while trying a different power cable. Perhaps a dead or dying capacitor
could cause this, or simply an exhausted power supply, I don't know. But
worth a shot. :)
Click to expand...


All of the wires tie back into the exact same block and they are just
drench'd in soilder.. That doesnt mean however that you cant get a cable
that has too many wires with cracks, or even excessive load on one of the
joins.. But the supplys "usually" have all of the same voltages coming from
the exact same source.
 
It's dead.

If the BIOS cannot boot the hard disk then you will need to send to a
company like ontrack if you want the data back off it. Very expensive
though.
 
DanielEKFA said:
Turns out neither drive was dead, it was just
the power supply acting weird.
Click to expand...

Those power connectors are frequently very poor quality and the contact
loose their springyness easily after a few mating cycles.
 
CWatters said:
Those power connectors are frequently very poor quality and the contact
loose their springyness easily after a few mating cycles.
Click to expand...

But that's what puzzles me, because the Y-cable works fine on the PATA+SATA
connectors, and the PATA connector without the Y-cable works fine on the
optical drive (and the optical drive worked when it split the connector
with the HDD, too). Couldn't it be a flaw in the PSU, for instance a
worn-out capacitor on this connector, like when your hi-fi amp loses its
bass oomph after you've damaged the capacitors by overheating them? That's
what I was thinking... Because I figured a HDD would need more power than
an optical drive? I was also thinking, since I was playing games both times
I experienced the effect of the drive failing (system froze for a second or
two, then continued), that I was maxing out the PSU by using max CPU and
GPU while running a four-disk RAID5 array + three firewire discs, two
optical drives, a firewire card, a soundblaster card, and external firewire
audio card and an external usb card. But I'm running all those things now
without probbies after switching connectors... I'm a bit puzzled as you can
probably tell, but mostly happy it works now :)
 
Folkert said:
A bad day when a gamer is posed off as an expert.
Click to expand...

I was wondering how long it would take to respond to that, Folkert.

I also found it fascinating.


Odie
--
 
Mike Tomlinson said:
quote from the above:

"Personal anecdote/sidenote: I use the "Freezer trick", with drives that
have run out of warranty in an attempt to force the atoms inside the
drive to pull together."
Click to expand...

I'll admit that never occurred to me... 8)
Christ.
Click to expand...

Al Shugart must be rolling-over in his grave. Oh wait, he's still
alive. 8)
 
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