# My laptops HDD died



## Costello (May 10, 2007)

Wow so this is a great day for me.

As soon as I wake up first thing I learn:
our image server was shut down by our server provider as it was being used by hackers to send spam and "phishing".
Great.

So as I'm about to look and check the server, boom: my laptops HDD dies.
Actually it was nothing like a boom. I was just using my pc checking my mail with firefox, 
then suddenly the PC freezes and I hear a slightly clicky noise coming from my HDD.

So I turn the PC off and guess what? it doesnt boot anymore.
Both Fedora and XP fail during startup. XP gives me a black screen immediatly and doesnt do anything.
Fedora displays some text then crashes when trying to access the HDD.
I'm surprised because some files can still be read from the HDD apparently,
small files like the multiboot loader (grub) or the system initialization sequence of windows and linux.

I also tried loading a linux liveCD but it failed because at some point it tried to access my HDD, and got stuck in an infinite error loop.

So, in short, what are my options?


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## Mehdi (May 10, 2007)

its dead get a new HD. If you want to save the contents of the old HD u can buy a external case for it and connect it on your working pc/laptop. Maybe you can find something in it. Otherwise you can spend hundreds of dollars to send it over to a place where they will try and get all th econtent out for you.


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## xabier (May 10, 2007)

Get another one, mine also crashed while I was surfing the net, the laptop stoped and when i rebooted it, it simply won't pass from bios screen.

If you want to use a livecd, as i did till my hdd arrived you can disable de hardisk from the bios.

Good luck! laptops hdds slightly more expensive that common ones, but as we usually don't need much space on laptops it's okay with a small one, mine was 40gb and when it broke i bought 80gb for 50€


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## Costello (May 10, 2007)

I cant disable my HDD in the bios... I tried
there is barely any option my bios which kinda sucks


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## pikachucrackpipe (May 10, 2007)

do the hdd freezer trick
its like the cheap over solder trick


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## xabier (May 10, 2007)

QUOTE(Costello @ May 10 2007 said:


> I cant disable my HDD in the bios... I tried
> there is barely any option my bios which kinda sucks



so take it out, i just had to remove 2 philips screws. Laptop still works without hdd, I recommend you sabayon linux livecd, it's very complete and everything works out of the box


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## KDH (May 10, 2007)

You Probably don't have to take it out. Some live CDs have options to ignore your hard drives (Knoppix's 'nofstab' for example). Its easier than removing the drive, plus you  could try manually mounting it to see if any data is recoverable.


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## retrohead (May 10, 2007)

BartPE may work costello. Just a thought, I havn't used it much though and whether it accesses the HDD or not I'm not sure.

Good Luck


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## Costello (May 10, 2007)

yeah I know about that, I tried it once but was never able to build an iso. Shame!


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## zone97 (May 10, 2007)

get one of these.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-USB-to-IDE-SATA-AT...1QQcmdZViewItem

their cheap and work well for all drive types.. IDE,SATA,LAPTOP

then get you another drive and reinstall your system, use the above mention cable to get what you can recover off, then run all kinds of diagnostics on the old drive, or use some of the drive recovery programs out. Like partition magic, ontrack as a shareware recovery program. Pray that its not to physically damaged.. Most clicking noises are caused by the drive arm smacking against the stop bar on the drive.  due to the motor trying to push it past its physical limits.

if it only clicks randomly its plausable you can get data, if its steady and repeating.. its more than likley gone.


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## pikachucrackpipe (May 10, 2007)

You might want to try this also
http://ping.windowsdream.com/

It could be a partition error!


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## Kyuzumaki (May 10, 2007)

get a new drive and reinstall, I doubt your laptop has 2 HDD bays so if you can get a friends pc connect the drive to their pc and try to extract as much as you can. Sometimes the drive will read even if it won't boot. 

This is a non exact science but u may need to tilt the thing about till it begine to read problems are almost always mechanical so u can jiggle stuff into place. 

Last time i had a HDD fail I attempted to open it up and then jammed some tinfoil into the reader mechanism to stop it from clicking down got about half of the stuff off before it broke completly


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## Costello (May 10, 2007)

I'm thinking of buying this one:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...duct_uid=108820

any advice or recommendation?

I'll try to recover data later...


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## larvi (May 10, 2007)

Once you get a replacement, it's definitely worth trying the freezer trick as mentioned above.  I was able to salvage and copy off the data from a couple of older HD's that wouldn't spin up by doing that.


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## pikachucrackpipe (May 10, 2007)

QUOTE(Costello @ May 10 2007 said:


> I'm thinking of buying this one:
> http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...duct_uid=108820
> 
> any advice or recommendation?
> ...



i gave you two free ideas and you didn't listen to me


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## Costello (May 10, 2007)

actually I chose this one slightly different.

pikachu: I didn't hear anything 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Sorry mate but I haven't waited for you, I've spent the whole day trying to solve my problem. I've asked people that are a thousand times more qualified than you or me and my hdd is definitely broken. It's not about the partitions, it's not about freezing or whatever. It's a hardware problem and it can't be fixed magically. Like I said I'll work on recovering the data later, I have exams very soon (on Saturday) and it's a terrible time for me to even discuss this


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## Dirtie (May 10, 2007)

QUOTE(larvi @ May 11 2007 said:


> Once you get a replacement, it's definitely worth trying the freezer trick as mentioned above.Â I was able to salvage and copy off the data from a couple of older HD's that wouldn't spin up by doing that.


^ Your best shot 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 (other than paying hundreds/thousands for professional recovery)


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## adgloride (May 10, 2007)

When my last harddrive was going I got more of a grinding noise.  Luckly I managed to back it all up before it went all together.  Try the freezer trick like everyone else as said, if it works put all the data on another harddrive.  I've had my IBM T20 for a few years now and the harddrive is still going strong.  I would recommend an IBM harddrive next time.


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## Kyuzumaki (May 11, 2007)

That HDD looks good, exams suck


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## GBA_Temper (May 11, 2007)

QUOTE(Costello @ May 10 2007 said:


> Wow so this is a great day for me.
> 
> As soon as I wake up first thing I learn:
> our image server was shut down by our server provider as it was being used by hackers to send spam and "phishing".
> ...



WTF SAME THING MY LAPTOP DID went on a blue screen then when it tried to reboot the HD was making a thumping noise so my mom replaced the HD


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## Westside (May 11, 2007)

Just for future reference, Costello, use an HDD with better cooling.  Most of my hard drive dies in summer and the ones that have heatsink on them never dies.  If possible, get a heatsink with the drive.


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## Jiggah (May 11, 2007)

^That's sort of an odd statement considering you're running it in a laptop, which aren't known for ventilation.  Also, a lot of the laptop HDD are usually supplied by one manufacturer, last time I checked it was Toshiba, but that's a while ago, maybe some other companies have jumped into the laptop HDD business.  Just get a cooling mat for laptops.

The freezer trick is suppose to work, at least that's what I heard.  It looks like a new drive is the only solution, which might give you the chance to get a better drive from the oem 5400 rpm laptop drives to a 7200 rpm one.


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## .TakaM (May 11, 2007)

my hard drive recently became corrupt/unreadable
if you need to recover any files from it, I highly recommend Restorer 200 pro:
http://www.bitmart.net/
I can *hook you up* if you need also


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## Westside (May 11, 2007)

QUOTE(Jiggah @ May 10 2007 said:


> ^That's sort of an odd statement considering you're running it in a laptop, which aren't known for ventilation.Â Also, a lot of the laptop HDD are usually supplied by one manufacturer, last time I checked it was Toshiba, but that's a while ago, maybe some other companies have jumped into the laptop HDD business.Â Just get a cooling mat for laptops.
> 
> The freezer trick is suppose to work, at least that's what I heard.Â It looks like a new drive is the only solution, which might give you the chance to get a better drive from the oem 5400 rpm laptop drives to a 7200 rpm one.


Which is why I recommended a heatsink.  Heat sinks are small in size and you can put them on your 2.5 HDDs.  Now I mean a hard drive heat sink.  It kinda looks like magnets.


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## imgod22222 (May 11, 2007)

This is why you make backups. If you're lazy like me, get a new HDD (which you probably have to do anyway) Make a list of what programs were on it with sticky notes (if it goes off a sticky note, just add another to that sticky note and keep writing) Until you have a huge list. (mine ran about 6 sticky notes, 80 programs) Then take out your existing HDD. Rip the living hell out of it (i took the top of because there's something glorifiying about the inside of an HDD. maybe because its shiny?) Insert newly bought HDD and spend about a week restoring your programs.

Or if you never want this to happen again, get a Solid State Drive.(story is because they're so damn expensive)  Then you'll be like all those orphans in christmas movies asking for more soup in that cracked bowl of yours and the big fat social worker goes "NO MORE!!" when there clearly is, and you see through those rusty hinges she's eating it all, that ferocious pig. 

But if this HDD had those images or had something "irreplacable" i should hope its not something private or illegal, so you can ask someone to electron-microscope it so they can restore all whatever billion 1s and 0s you have on those little platters.


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## Costello (May 11, 2007)

I'm gonna get an external HDD aswell, and create a program that backs up all the files i need on a monthly basis

thanks for your help guys 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




thanks takam I'll look into it


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## pikachucrackpipe (May 11, 2007)

3rd suggestion:

Get a RAID NAS and do a weekly/daily backup


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## Costello (May 11, 2007)

the freezing trick didn't work (not like I actually believed it would 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 )

when my HDD is plugged in, I can't seem to be able to boot any OS at all, not even Live CDs because even Live CDs try to access the hard drive (trying to read it most probably) and fail and crash.


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## pikachucrackpipe (May 11, 2007)

does the hdd make an odd clicking noise?


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## betaboy (May 11, 2007)

Youre gonna need a new hard drive and a system rebuild. If you are lucky, once you have reloaded the OS on the new disk, you'll be able to put the old one in an external 2.5" HDD USB enclosure and recover some of your files.

Do you know how to get the old hard drive out of you're specific laptop model? If you want to give me the model of you laptop, I'll see if I can get the hardware maintenance manual (I work for a large computer company - one of the biggest laptop manufacturers).

Edit:Typo


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## xabier (May 11, 2007)

QUOTE(Westside @ May 11 2007 said:


> Just for future reference, Costello, use an HDD with better cooling.Â Most of my hard drive dies in summer and the ones that have heatsink on them never dies.Â If possible, get a heatsink with the drive.



mine died in december  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 and it got heatsink


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## funem (May 11, 2007)

Try this program. I have used it before and dont ask me why but it does work. You will need access to a computer to create a floppy disk as well as a floppy disk drive for the problem PC

HDD Regenerator    You could even try the free demo which will according to the website :-

You can always download free demo version and try to regenerate the first found bad sector. The main purpose of the unregistered demo version is to display a report which contains information about the possibility to regenerate the entire disk by means of the registered full version. If the first found bad sector has been successfully regenerated, you can buy the product to regenerate all bad sectors on your hard drive. If the first bad sector has NOT been successfully regenerated, then replace your hard disk drive as soon as possible. 

You may then be able to retrieve your data and move it to a new drive.

As I said I have used it and it works, we also have used this at work to recover data.


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## Costello (May 11, 2007)

^ thanks for the advice, but at the moment I can merely not start my computer if the disk is plugged in.
And I'd rather not have to hot-plug the HDD, could make things worse!




QUOTE(pikachucrackpipe @ May 11 2007 said:


> does the hdd make an odd clicking noise?



yes, it does

and yes of course I was able to take it out of my PC
I already bought a new HDD, should be there tomorrow


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## skullstatue (May 11, 2007)

I believe this type of malfunction is hardware related. Laptop hard drives usually don't last long, I have even seen the reader scrape against the disk, happens all of the time. So yup, it's worth a shot though.


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## adgloride (May 11, 2007)

QUOTE(skullstatue @ May 11 2007 said:


> I believe this type of malfunction is hardware related. Laptop hard drives usually don't last long, I have even seen the reader scrape against the disk, happens all of the time. So yup, it's worth a shot though.



My laptop harddrive as been going around 5 years.  Over the last 3 years, I've used the laptop everyday.  The harddrive is still going strong.


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## pikachucrackpipe (May 11, 2007)

QUOTE(Costello @ May 11 2007 said:


> QUOTE(pikachucrackpipe @ May 11 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > does the hdd make an odd clicking noise?
> ...







good luck getting the data if the hdd is clicking.
i was hoping it was just a simple partition rebuild.


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## Costello (May 12, 2007)

my new HDD arrived this morning.. and guess what? it doesnt work...
its not recognized by my PC.
The bios doesnt recognize it, or randomly beeps on start up...
have I done something wrong?


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## Louse76 (May 12, 2007)

Yikes!

Any jumpers on the rear of the drive to modify for master/slave?


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## shaunj66 (May 12, 2007)

QUOTE(Louse76 @ May 12 2007 said:


> Yikes!
> 
> Any jumpers on the rear of the drive to modify for master/slave?


Doesn't make a difference. Tried every combination (as there's no diagram on the drive) to no avail.


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## Louse76 (May 12, 2007)

Uh oh, maybe a controller problem?


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