Hard drive errors

NightmareXX · 5 Jun 2009 at 17:01

I was logged on to my server today and just doing general things on it and suddenly one of my drives stopped responding. The entire system slowed to a crawl and I got a ton of failed write error messages from windows. Checked speedfan and it's SMART setting and the drive has a ton of reallocated sector errors.

Restarted the PC and now I get the "backup and replace" message from SMART.

Started windows in safe mode, ran a check disk and didn't return anything odd. What could have happened to cause it to bomb out on me like that?

NightmareXX · 5 Jun 2009 at 18:11

Well now I can't even access the drive. Taken it out and put it on my main PC and it won't even show up in the BIOS. Guess it's dead?

NightmareXX · 5 Jun 2009 at 18:23

To add to the confusion, as I was moving it between the two PC's, I heard a loud clunk inside the drive and now it no longer works

Rroff · 5 Jun 2009 at 18:34

Sounds like something mechanical failed in the read/write head arm thingy.

wupwup · 5 Jun 2009 at 18:37

yep its dead.

NightmareXX · 5 Jun 2009 at 18:46

Died in a few seconds? It was running 100% fine up until then.

miniyazz · 5 Jun 2009 at 19:12

That's what HDDs do.. and why we backup!

JonJ678 · 5 Jun 2009 at 19:25

It was good enough to tell you it was dying, just wasn't quite as much warning as you might have liked. Did you manage to back it up in that time, or just run checkdisk?

NightmareXX · 5 Jun 2009 at 19:36

No, it told me about 5 minutes before I managed to kill it. I got loads of failed delayed write errors in windows, thought it was a bug, restarted windows and had the same problem. Took the drive out of the computer and transferred it over to mine. While I was transferring it, I heard a loud clunk inside the drive and since then, it isn't seen by the BIOS.

NightmareXX · 5 Jun 2009 at 19:53

Just used a stethoscope to listen to the drive and I can definitely hear it spin up and hear the heads moving around. Still isn't recognised by the BIOS though

miniyazz · 6 Jun 2009 at 01:13

Never would've thought to use a stethoscope.. last time I was identifying which drive was making a noise it was the rather less subtle approach of palpation

leexgx · 6 Jun 2009 at 03:41

the Click of Death

should have got the data off the drive it was the check disk that finished it off in the end

as it try's to fix an error moves stuff around and then that part broke as well on the HDD

you be getting an short or lots of small clicks then an Pause, it keep on doing that and not get detected by the BIOS

jak731 · 6 Jun 2009 at 03:52

Did you have important data on there? If not think yourself lucky and rma it. If you did then their are a few thing you can try, like the freezer trick. If those don't work then data recovery is an expensive solution.