Any one know any rescue technique for hard drives that go clickety-clack on boot and can't be seen by xp setup?
doa hd's Thanks for the reply. I just seemed to recall seeing something about a sometimes fix and can't recall what or where.
There used to be a common trick of sealing the drive in plastic zip lock as air tight as possible and freezing overnight. This would allow the platters to loosen up a bit and maybe break loose of the read write heads. The click is the heads being stuck and the motor trying to move them.. I have never gotten this to work, if it does, it will only be long enough to get some info from it..
I seriously doubt that it will work (especially if it is a Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor), mostly because HDD must be opened in order to release the heads. Also, not very reliable method.
So I tried it out and it partially work. Before freezing the HD, I hooked it up to a SATA to USB cable and then to my laptop. I never got my system to dectect the HD but I could hear it click-click. I then took the HD and placed it in a anti-static bag, which I plastic-warp, and finally placed into a zip-lock bag. I left it for over 24+ hours in the freezer. I quicky took it out, re-hooked it up and my laptop was able to detected it. After installing the drivers files (I did it on Vista), I tried opening up the drive. But as the HD heated up (which was very quick), it somehow lost connection. Now that it's back at room temp, the HD is back at it old clicking state.
Thats what I was getting at..After the platters expand, the heads stick again. It is basically only a brief window to recover some data...never meant to be a fix.. It is kind of amazing, as this "trick" has been around for many, many moons, and is generally a last ditch effort at some semblance of data recovery..(since the days when a 512mb was HUGE!) It is an option, but it is safer than opening a drive up..unless you have a clean room, the probability of opening the drive, unsticking the heads, and closing it without serious problems id nearly nil.. I am not sure what a fluid bearing motor has to do with anything, as the process involves contraction and expansion of the metal platters...nothing more..the actuator motor is still functioning in most cases.. I will agree that is it not very reliable.....and I have never seen it work well...
Fluid is in the motor, hence if the fluid freezes the motor can be destroyed inside. Just like with the car, but this is very fragile and sensitive mechanism.
Yes older person like me 52 years has had some success freezing hard drives as you did state last minute resort to try and get data off drive not a fix to sort drive, some times when all is lost a good thump may also help. P.S yes when 512 MB was huge like amiga expansion card 512 MB £100 two weeks wages (
The fluid is not water,but an oil such as a synthetic based ester ..it wont freeze...not in a freezer leastwise... Far below freezing is required (-20C or so).. nice try though...
click-clack hds Thanks for the responses, guys. But what I think I saw was a software fix; maybe something to do with boot files?
Run the mfg. diags on the drive. RMA if under warranty. Sounds like you have some unreadable sectors, the clackety-click is often the head hitting the reststop, resetting as it is trying to read data it cannot read. If the drive has a physical problem as many here suspect it does, no software will "repair" the drive. Some software might aid in recovering some data and transferring it to another drive. Two types of drive failures, logical and physical. Some logical issues can be repaired or worked around, but physical problems usually require the drive be disassembled and mounted into a special machine that reads the platters to recover the data.