Did my Raptor just die????

[Ge|atinousFury]

Ok I'm sitting here in my computer chair doing some Thermodynamics homework when suddenly my 2 week old 36.7GB Raptor starts popping and clicking really loudly like it's trying to seek or find a file. 15 seconds later my computer freezes up. This happens totally out of nowhere.

I power down the computer and start it back up, and I hear the Raptor spin up, click very loudly, then it precedes to click loudly again roughly once every second for as long as I leave the computer on. The screen freezes after post and I can't boot into windows.

I'm pretty sure my drive just kicked the bucket but I'm just gonna make sure.

[mR. STuPiD]

The dreaded click strikes again! The maxtor drive I bought issued the dreaded click, first irregularlly, still sometimes booting, and finally kicked the bucket entirely. All my data was lost on that drive, forunatly I had cloned the drive from an old 20GB WD I had that I had not yet formated. So luckily I recovered MOST of my data, I lost all my game saves, I only had my installer files, mp3s, and documents on the old drive. I rma'd the drive, and am running off a replacement right now. My advice to you is to try to get the drive to just boot on any computer, and if you can, immediatly copy all of your data off of it. You may want to try the freezer trick. It may not be quite dead yet, but it will be within a week. Don't give up on your first try, clear your cmos a few times. If it finally has experienced its demise, your data is lost. Try to RMA it, just be aware that you wont be able to get the code most hdd manufacturers require for RMAs because your computer wont recognize the drive for the software to run. Bad luck dude, hopefully you'll be able to get it replaced.

[Ge|atinousFury]

Cleared CMOS and tried to boot....nothing. I just got approved for a Newegg RMA so tomorrow it'll be in the mail.

This is my first ever dead hard drive.....I didn't know what to think when I heard it making all that noise.

[RedArmy]

Does anybody know what exactly fails in HDD's most of the time ?
Mechanically wise I mean.

[FuzzyBallz]

If you ever opened a dead HD, you'll see a few arms extending to the the discs, w/ read/write heads on the tip of the arms. These heads are very very very close to the disc surface, but not touching. When these heads do touch the disc surface, you're in deep ****.

Heat is the biggest HD killer of course, followed by poor power line routing and weak PSU.

[theELVISCERATOR]

I would guess vibration...otherwise known as somehow banging the thing while its running while you pass off one drive to another like a cheap date....hehe...:D