# HDD going *thud*



## librin.so.1 (Jun 2, 2012)

Hello!

So, today one of my HDDs did a loud *thud* (the whole computer case jumped a little when that happened). Now my computer won't go past POST if that HDD is attached. And while it is attached it makes a strange dull noise while spinning, and it seems like it suddenly stops (with weak dull *khrrr* sound) every couple of seconds.

I suppose that means it is quite irrecoverably dead.
Yet, any ideas? It was holding a lot of important data, and I don't really feel like using those ultra-expensive data recovery services ~___~
Maybe there is a way? (a fool's hope prolly, but still...)


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## de.das.dude (Jun 2, 2012)

its dead.

that thud was the head catching onto the platter.
what was the manufacturer?


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## librin.so.1 (Jun 2, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> its dead.
> 
> that thud was the head catching onto the platter.
> what was the manufacturer?



Bummer. 
It was Seagate. It was ~6 years old. *sigh* I was about to get a new HDD next week, to backup all my important data just in case. And that "case" happened. A little "ahead of schedule". :shadedshu


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## Black Panther (Jun 2, 2012)

DDD is right, the HDD is dead. My brother's HDD did exactly the same thing recently.

Now for a solution..
*(Warning - this is going to sound very ghetto but it worked for me to retreive info from my brother's HDD)*.

Remove any other HDD's you might have in the pc except the faulty one.

Have a screw-driver and a hammer ready. I'm serious. A flat-bladed screw driver (as opposed to phillips or star shaped) is better for the grip.

Place the screw-driver somewhere on the HDD where it won't slip off easily.
When the disk starts making that 'krrrr' sound every couple of seconds, while the pc is booting up, hit the screw driver with the hammer. Start gently at first. Hit it like once every second timing it with the 'krrr' sound and keeping your eyes on the monitor.
Stop hitting the HDD as soon as the 'krrr' sound stops, and the pc POSTS and Windows loads.

The HDD should work fine until you power off the computer again.


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## librin.so.1 (Jun 2, 2012)

@Black Panther
If that is going to work for me, I will owe You big time!
(and that solution does sound plausible!)

I will try it as soon as I get an empty HDD.


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## Black Panther (Jun 2, 2012)

Perhaps you could wait until someone comes up with a less extreme solution.

The only other solution I know of is putting the drive in a zip-lock bag and freeze it for at least 2 hours. But that's extreme too.

To give you an idea how my brother's drive looked (I had shutdown the pc several times after getting all the data, but then I kept testing if the method would work every time so I did it like 6 times more and the drive still ran):


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## de.das.dude (Jun 2, 2012)

back up on pendrives,
i dont think they are as perishable as hard drives.
i kinda expected it to be a seagate

i Knew a seagate that did the same thing


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## JrRacinFan (Jun 2, 2012)

@BP

Awesome recovery method you have. Will for sure use it if needed.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 2, 2012)

another seagate bites the dust 

Sorry - Im trying so hard to to troll. people know i dont like to touch anything made by seagate exactly due to reasons like the one here.


Next time buy a Western Digital hard drive. Im not saying their drives dont breakdown but  people generally seem to have much more success with WD then Seagate. 

IMO they are the more favorable brand after Samsung sold their department to seagate.


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## micropage7 (Jun 2, 2012)

Vinska said:


> Bummer.
> It was Seagate. It was ~6 years old. *sigh* I was about to get a new HDD next week, to backup all my important data just in case. And that "case" happened. A little "ahead of schedule". :shadedshu



yeah for 6 years thats pretty old
you should back it up more often


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## de.das.dude (Jun 2, 2012)

i have a hitachi 80gb drive thats 5 years old and without a bad sector. so good, its my OS drive 

i prefer w.d > hitachi.
never a seagate.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 2, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> i have a hitachi 80gb drive thats 5 years old and without a bad sector. so good, its my OS drive
> 
> i prefer w.d > hitachi.
> never a seagate.



GG.

but unfortunately Hitachi's HDD department were aquired by WD not long ago for $4.8billion

so its end of the road for you when this one craps up....


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 2, 2012)

im with freedom here, WD Hdds all the way, ive had a WD or two fail but they deffinately exceeded 6 years everytime ,and that will do for me in raid 0 too, so they were thrashed, and hot 45+ all there lives, ive since learned to keep them within 32-39 degrees and they last even longer, none have since passed in fact, ones goin on ten a wd 250 blue


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## bmaverick (Jun 2, 2012)

I have had 7 WD HDD over the years.  Out of the 7, 6 died between 3 and 5 years.  One died after 2 years.  I'm not partial to any brand.  However, I must say, the Samsung drive has last the longest. 

As for recovery, two of the WD drives, the "place in freezer bag" in the freezer over night trick worked.  About 95% of the data was recoverable.  After the drive is taken out of the freezer, let it warm up to room temp naturally.  Then place it back into a computer as a "slave" drive.  Transfer the files over to the main drive or a jump drive.  Do not try burning the files from the bad drive directly to a DVD/CD.  It puts too much stress on the bad drive and can corrupt your data being pulled off.


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## Black Panther (Jun 2, 2012)

FreedomEclipse said:


> another seagate bites the dust
> 
> people know i dont like to touch anything made by seagate exactly due to reasons like the one here.
> 
> Next time buy a Western Digital hard drive.





Sorry couldn't help it. 

I have a Seagate which has been running fine for nearly 6 years.

And my brother's HDD, the very one pictured above.......
is a Western Digital..


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 2, 2012)

Black Panther said:


> Sorry couldn't help it.
> 
> I have a Seagate which has been running fine for nearly 6 years.
> 
> ...



I owned a 80GB seagate barricuda for less then 2 weeks and it died. that happened longer then 6 years ago

Ive had maxtor's that lasted longer then 3 or 4 years - long enough to be sold on when they were not required. afaik some of them are still working. Ive only had about 2 of them go down on me but by that time they were long out of warranty.

Every manufacturer makes a bad batch of drives every now and again. theres no avoiding it. Ive heard horror stories from both sides. but one of the most re-occuring stories i hear about is about a seagate & their drives dying. 

Some people might say my opinion is bias. infact one member of this forum would probably argue with me about it because he works as a tech at a shop and he hasnt had that many returns on bad seagate hard drives even though he services the tech & PC needs of hundreds of people. 

Some people are just that damned lucky.

for instance.... I have some Senheisser CX300's headphones. Ive probably owned them longer then 4years. they have been discontinued for a long time, but when i dig up reviews about them I see plenty of people complaining about how the cord is weak and it breaks or snaps so easily. My CX300s have had very very heavy use since I unboxed them  within minutes of their purchase. apart from some dirty sound isolation rubbers they are working great and sound still comes out in stereo and not only one headphone like when you break a cord inside.


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## Black Panther (Jun 2, 2012)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Some people are just that damned lucky.



So true, I think it really depends on luck.
My dad's 2TB Seagate died within a month. He wanted it replaced with another brand and the seller agreed.
Maxtors are notorious for running hot and having a short life-time. I've still got a couple of 80GB IDE Maxtors in working condition. 
Then as I pointed out, my bro's was a WD which have a great reputation.
Well.... it should be elevated to sainthood and martyrdom now with all the beatings I gave it 

____________________

But let me not derail this thread anymore.. 

*Vinska* let us know if you managed to get your HDD running again, and which method worked. Good luck!


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## librin.so.1 (Jun 2, 2012)

Hehe! My computer had a mix of a seagate, a samsung, and a WD before the seagate one died.
That seagate was "inherited" from my old computer. And I had only a little influence on what went into that rig. (I was freshly 16 y.o. at that time btw)

*A BIG ALSO...*
The fact that *someone* decided, that it was a good idea to roll a working computer on the side, to reach something behind it, probably had a lot to do with this... 
(it happened right after returning it into the "proper" position)


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## Frick (Jun 2, 2012)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I owned a 80GB seagate barricuda for less then 2 weeks and it died. that happened longer then 6 years ago
> 
> Ive had maxtor's that lasted longer then 3 or 4 years - long enough to be sold on when they were not required. afaik some of them are still working. Ive only had about 2 of them go down on me but by that time they were long out of warranty.
> 
> ...



And I would agree with him. We discussed this at lenght before but I can't find the thread, but here's some good info. They pull together the numbers pretty often (google "Les taux de retour des composants"). The Seagate XT drives has rised quite a bit. Otherwise no indication that Seagate are worse than the others.


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## D4S4 (Jun 2, 2012)

vinska, if you have a place relatively free of dust you could probably open the drive and see what's wrong, it should live long enough to recover the data opened up. this thud you described sounds like something's loose inside, you can remove it when you open the drive if that's the case. also you can see if the platter is scratched or something. slamming the drive with debris inside will only make things worse.


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## librin.so.1 (Jun 2, 2012)

@D4S4

I think I'll just try the freezer option first...

And, a place relatively free of dust? I would probably have easier time finding a *not-yet-a-woman* in a brother than this. *sigh*


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## de.das.dude (Jun 2, 2012)

FreedomEclipse said:


> GG.
> 
> but unfortunately Hitachi's HDD department were aquired by WD not long ago for $4.8billion
> 
> so its end of the road for you when this one craps up....



that even better, WD all the way


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## D4S4 (Jun 3, 2012)

Vinska said:


> @D4S4
> 
> I think I'll just try the freezer option first...
> 
> And, a place relatively free of dust? I would probably have easier time finding a *not-yet-a-woman* in a brother than this. *sigh*



well, you could always close your bathroom, make tons of steam in it and let it settle down, it would take out most of the dust. but idk how willing you are to take your pc to the bathroom 

anything where you don't see much dust flying through a beam of light should do.


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## Yo_Wattup (Jun 3, 2012)

Why not just dismantle it and get the actual platter (disk) out of it and put it in a new enclosure? this way you could see if there are any scratches on it, i.e. if it is usable or not.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 3, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Why not just dismantle it and get the actual platter (disk) out of it and put it in a new enclosure? this way you could see if there are any scratches on it, i.e. if it is usable or not.



hdds are not only made to work in a clean eviroment they are also designed to work in a vacum, dont open it, nothing good will come of that, and no ones got any where clean enough in an average house, try the freezer method , if that dosnt work you could try a hdd recovery firm or count it as the Backup lesson finally learned,.

i learned the hard way a while ago

i work in a clean room and it isnt clean enough for that, despite being clean enough to make mass spec innards.


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## Laurijan (Jun 3, 2012)

Black Panther said:


> DDD is right, the HDD is dead. My brother's HDD did exactly the same thing recently.
> 
> Now for a solution..
> *(Warning - this is going to sound very ghetto but it worked for me to retreive info from my brother's HDD)*.
> ...



LOL! I once could copy the files of a broken HDD after opened it and moved the reading head and blew air from my mouth to the disk inside.


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## Black Panther (Jun 3, 2012)

Laurijan said:


> LOL! I once could copy the files of a broken HDD after opened it and moved the reading head and blew air from my mouth to the disk inside.



 You literally gave it the kiss of life!


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## de.das.dude (Jun 3, 2012)

i did that to an old 40GB drive 

it worked for some time. then started showing its as a 250MB drive lololol.


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## lastcalaveras (Jun 3, 2012)

try sweet talking it worked a few times for me in the past. lol


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 3, 2012)

lastcalaveras said:


> try sweet talking it worked a few times for me in the past. lol



some yanks find putting one of THESE through it works too...



Spoiler


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## D4S4 (Jun 4, 2012)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> hdds are not only made to work in a clean eviroment they are also designed to work in a vacum



what? the head hovers over the platter because there's air. if the disk was vacuumed, it would never lift off.

new disks are muck more sensitive to dust than the older ones but i believe it should survive long enough opened up to manage to get the data off it.


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## librin.so.1 (Aug 27, 2012)

Myeah, I've got myself a replacement HDD (finally!), so I am trying the freezer solution out.
I have my [borken] HDD in the freezer at this very moment, but I have a couple of questions:
Should I try to "use" (try to read the contents) while it is still freezer-cold, or should I let it warm up back to room temperature?
If I should let it warm up - should I make it to warm up quickly, slowly, or very slowly?
(by quickly, I mean give it an additional heat source. By slowly, I mean leave it somewhere in my room, "unaided". By very slowly, I mean leave it somewhere in my room, but have it wrapped in cold insulation so it would get the warmth from the surrounding air much slower.)

*sigh* I should have thought about what to do after taking it out of the freezer much sooner.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 27, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> back up on pendrives,
> i dont think they are as perishable as hard drives.
> i kinda expected it to be a seagate
> 
> i Knew a seagate that did the same thing



thumb drives are susceptible to ESD bad

Extreme temp changes can cause more harm than good



FreedomEclipse said:


> some yanks find putting one of THESE through it works too...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Love this approach.

Ive had a Laptop drive head park improperly before. Id need a new head actuator for it to work. and its quite amazing that a HDD all works off Induction.


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## Completely Bonkers (Aug 27, 2012)

LET THIS THREAD BE A REMINDER TO EVERYONE (AGAIN) TO BACKUP THEIR HDDs!

(quickly hides under desk before people look at my rather poor backup strategy)


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 27, 2012)

Completely Bonkers said:


> LET THIS THREAD BE A REMINDER TO EVERYONE (AGAIN) TO BACKUP THEIR HDDs!
> 
> (quickly hides under desk before people look at my rather poor backup strategy)



Thumbs Up button is needed for this one


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## librin.so.1 (Aug 27, 2012)

BTW, as a replacement for that Seagate, I bought a 1TB WD Caviar Black. I hope this one will be reliable. (and the 5 year warranty looks sweet!)

Now, to wait for that Seagate to warm up and see if I will be able to salvage anything. it spent the night in a freezer =d


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## itsakjt (Aug 27, 2012)

I have a Seagate ST380817AS 80 GB SATA I HDD 7200 RPM which is almost 7 years old and without a single bad sector and any other errors and works absolutely good as new. 
But now-a-days, I also prefer WD over Seagate.
But I will not say that I won't buy a Seagate HDD again. Most of the Seagate drives which went dead as far as I saw were all due to power problems and/or excessive mishandling.
They perform rock solid and their speeds are way better than any other HDD brand at present.
Infact the very next HDD I am gonna get will be a Seagate.
Another cause for HDD failure is bad cases which causes the drives to stack one after the other without any gap. Obviously, each drive has its own magnetic field and if they interfere it is obvious that a HDD's life will be lesser. Also some people keep the woofer of their speakers near the case as well. Never do that.


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## librin.so.1 (Aug 27, 2012)

Oy nutter!

So, the freezer thing didn't work as expected: the drive no longer clicks, the computer goes through POST and boots up with it attached [YAY!], but the disk does not get detected [NOOOOOO!!! Do not want]. It takes a while till BIOS finishes detecting drives with it attached. And detects this one as "none". I tried it in both IDE and AHCI modes - same. 

Any ideas?


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## FreedomEclipse (Aug 27, 2012)

Vinska said:


> Any ideas?



give it a heroes funeral. 

Make sure it gets the respect it deserves as you consign its mechanical soul to the depths of the earthly grave from which its metallic body originated and was crafted from by the hands of master craftsmen and molded into a slab of ultimate mechanical win for the masses to store their digital delicacies and pornographic delights.

he lived, as he died and to know him was to love him.


Amen~


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## Solaris17 (Aug 27, 2012)

Vinska said:


> Oy nutter!
> 
> So, the freezer thing didn't work as expected: the drive no longer clicks, the computer goes through POST and boots up with it attached [YAY!], but the disk does not get detected [NOOOOOO!!! Do not want]. It takes a while till BIOS finishes detecting drives with it attached. And detects this one as "none". I tried it in both IDE and AHCI modes - same.
> 
> Any ideas?



me sneekypete athlonX2 easy rhino erocker and glazeman had a running joke a few years back every time a peice of hardware died we would say


good night sweet prince and may flights of angels bring thee to thy rest.

EDIT:: of course the freezer trick didnt work did you seriously warm it up before running it? are you serious? freeze it again and plug it in cold pro tip hold the drive. if it clicks memorize the problem most of the time it is 2 clicks and the whirr. after the first click unplug the drive and plug it in again lickidy splitiv had to do it on a bad laptop drive worked mint.


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