hard drive clicking.... anyone take them apart to repair?

[murdok5]

So i have my friends SATA WD2500 hard drive. It is almost full of info, and is less than 3 months old. It will no long boot, adn hangs any system it is plugged into. When you turn on the comp it makes a noise like this:

click..click..click..click.............clicl..clic k...click....click.................repeat.

It sounds like the head or something is getting stuck when trying to read it. It IS under waranty and he would send it back, but then he looses all his data. To avoid cost or recovery, can it be taken apart and possibly fixed?

im fairly competent with electronics, but if it is like IMPOSSIBLE to fix something like this, then i wont even try.....anyone else try something like this?

Thanks

Mike

[CGR]

Sounds like the motor might be bad. Generally if you open it in a non clean environment you will get all kinds of dust/dirt in the drive and on the platers.

If the info is critical you could send it to a drive recovery place, however they can be very expensive. Otherwise I would just consider the drive dead.

[Vio1]

i doubt you would be able to repair it yourself. You most likely would damage it further, because dust particles could enter. Id contact western digitial and have it replaced. It is still under warranty if it is only three months old.

[murdok5]

yeah thats what i have been thinking.

anyone use some data recovery place and recomend it?

Mike

[bchur83]

I think PMS Fishy does Data recovery. Check the Services Section of the Classifieds.

EDIT:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=420670

[Sjaak]

Commercial firms for data recovery can ask up to 5000$ for a single drive...I haven't heard of any individuals attempting it (and succeeding).


*edit* ah cool, check post above here

[murdok5]

Commercial firms for data recovery can ask up to 5000$ for a single drive...I haven't heard of any individuals attempting it (and succeeding).


thats what i have heard too....kinda scary hahhaah

will get in touch with fishy....

Mike

[I.M.O.G.]

If your lucky, it might be a board problem... A board swap is relatively easy and safe in many cases. Best case scenario you might be able to try and find another dead drive of the same model which had internal problems, take the PCB off it and see if that solves your problem.

If its an internal problem, the odds of fixing it successfully are slim in the long term. Even if it is fixed, chances are particles will end up in there which will cause data errors and corruption on the disk after use. There are tricks one can use like running hot water in the shower with the door closed, creating a lot of steam, then letting the moist dust settle out to the floor because its heavier... But obviously this still isn't a good "clean room" situation like the factory has.

If I were trying to recover that data though, in the current state of things even without any repairs, I would boot from a preinstalled environment, like BartPE and try to ghost the drive to another hard drive. I've worked on drives with those symptoms, and with ghost and the right switches to ignore errors and corruption forcing the image to complete, it may take a long time but often times you can recover well over 90% of the data successfully still.

So here's what you should do:
Attempt recovery using a live CD with recovery software like Ghost or something else
Attempt switching out PCB with a working drive of same model
If all else fails, look into having someone open the drive and perform a repair

[murdok5]

the bios has errors reading the drive to get info on it. If you tell the system to boot from another device, it still hangs in the bios loading.

maybe try bart....i ahve a cd around here somewhere....

[I.M.O.G.]

Sounds like it could very possibly just have a board problem if its having trouble getting info on the drive in bios. Since its failing, that actually could be a good sign, the lesser of two evils.

[murdok5]

i hope!!! there are lik 200+ gigs of MP3s on there (friend is a DJ).

cant hurt to send to fishy for 20$ consultation though :)

[EternalX]

i took one apart once

couldnt get it back together

[BobbyXP3200]

Try and Flash your bios update it to the latest version, flash it even if you have the latest version. that might work

[I.M.O.G.]

Try and Flash your bios update it to the latest version, flash it even if you have the latest version. that might work

Explain why this might work.

BTW, I actually found this comment slightly funny just because its a perfect example of the magic many people think lies in firmware updates. Too many people are too quick to try flashing, when its not a common solution to undocumented issues, and it could result in complete system failure.

[BobbyXP3200]

It worked for me

it locked in bios trying to detect the hdd. took the hdd out and tried another one then it worked. Flashed the bios, put the original hdd back and wohoo it works

[murdok5]

we have tried this drive in like 5 systems though... :(

[Quailane]

we have tried this drive in like 5 systems though... :(

Your friend is a DJ and he has all of his music on a single drive and no backups of anything? Is he a newb or something?

Maybe next time some raid 1 or an external hard drive backup would be good. Especially if it is his job. Most of the time with clicking drives I can get the data off before it goes kaboom, but I have heard of a drive fixed.

My dad's friend had a hard drive that died, so he bought an identical one. He switched the pcb on the hard drive and he was able to recover all the data. I think that was pretty lucky, but it may be an option is the data is that critical.

[I.M.O.G.]

I know lots of DJ's, and most don't have any backup solution, except for the bigger ones. Most DJ's are small time, do it as a side job, and don't consider that sort of thing really.

[Super Nade]

Mate,

It could just be the noise one hears when the drive performs an automatic thermal recalibration.

[murdok5]

1st: he works for free when he can.

2nd: thermal recalibration? would that take a certain amount of time or after BIOS reading info from it? even if it isnt on boot list, the system wont boot if its plugged in.

i think he is just goin to buy a new one...

[K15]

So i have my friends SATA WD2500 hard drive. It is almost full of info, and is less than 3 months old. It will no long boot, adn hangs any system it is plugged into. When you turn on the comp it makes a noise like this:

click..click..click..click.............clicl..clic k...click....click.................repeat.

It sounds like the head or something is getting stuck when trying to read it. It IS under waranty and he would send it back, but then he looses all his data. To avoid cost or recovery, can it be taken apart and possibly fixed?

im fairly competent with electronics, but if it is like IMPOSSIBLE to fix something like this, then i wont even try.....anyone else try something like this?

Thanks

Mike



Very unlikely you can fix this. If the clicks are more like "scrrrrrrrrrape, click" it COULD be stuck platters/a bad motor. But you could tell if the platters weren't spinning. More than likely, it has bad sectors and is trying multiple times to read the data on the corrupted sectors. Or it had a head slap and damaged the disk, meaning the head scrapes the disk when it tries to read that part.
I wouldn't even try. Unless he doesn't REALLY care about the info (aka, the info is replacable) then you don't have much to lose, but I would try formatting it first. If that doesn't work, may as well open er up and see what's going on.

[I.M.O.G.]

K15's thoughts are interesting, though I would lean towards the likelihood of failing electronics causing loss of control of the R/W head... But I can't say I can back that up actually. The click I've heard numerous times seems top consistently rythmic/repetitive to logically consider them to be failed read attempts... But I can't say why that couldn't be so either.

Bottom line, if the drive isn't covered under warranty any longer, i would really like to see it opened up and maybe find out if there is any clearly discernable head crash.

[tom10167]

I know lots of DJ's, and most don't have any backup solution, except for the bigger ones. Most DJ's are small time, do it as a side job, and don't consider that sort of thing really.


I never backed my ****zle up either. :)

Except for some stuff I was really proud of, that I burned to CD.

[threeme2189]

try tapping it a few times at boot up...who knows maybe the drive platters are just kinda stuck?

[K15]

K15's thoughts are interesting, though I would lean towards the likelihood of failing electronics causing loss of control of the R/W head... But I can't say I can back that up actually. The click I've heard numerous times seems top consistently rythmic/repetitive to logically consider them to be failed read attempts... But I can't say why that couldn't be so either.

Bottom line, if the drive isn't covered under warranty any longer, i would really like to see it opened up and maybe find out if there is any clearly discernable head crash.


Happened to the drive in our satellite reciever. From what I can tell, the drive is fine. But when it gets to a certain spot on the disk, it can't read the video and clicks a bunch of times until it is past that part. Then it's fine. I don't think it's getting worse.