Gaming External Hardrive

[enigmaindex]

So yeah, i have a 200gig Maxtor hardrive in an enclosure connected to my PC via USB.

I first got it probably around 3-4 years ago to play PS2 backups and it worked well. And then i stopped playing my PS2. And the hardrive wasnt used for a while. I came accross it and decided to use it becasue it was fairly large and it was PATA aswell so it would work with my external enclosure as i didnt have any SATA enclosures.

So i probably have been using it for close to a year now, i store all my downloaded data on their as i reguraly go to my friends house and we swap files, as he has a shit internet connection. I probably turn the HDD on and off atleast once a day and havent really ever left it on for more than 2 hours.

But today i booted it up and it started like normal and then after i had finished copying stuff to it, it started to click.

The clicks were generally around 2-3 seconds apart and constant for about 1 minute until i decided to turn it off.

So has my old Maxtor finally starting to die on me? Because same thing happened to ym dad, but his external harddrive clicked like mine, yet he is still using it and this was probably now 3-4 months ago.

So my question, is it best to back up my hardrive now or will it be fine like my dads for the time being? I dont really want to lose everything on there, as all my pron is there

Thanks

 

[DEF-]

I've had harddrives do the same thing and after a restart they can still work fine. What happens is that the drive head locks up and needs a restart to reset its position. Most of the times though it wont help at all, and the harddrive will be dead. But there is a method you might want to try:


** This method is really a last resort only, so dont do it before you are sure that the drive will not work otherwise. Also it will probally woid your warranty if you have one. **

If the hdd still doesnt work after a few tries you can try the old freezing method. Remove the drive from the enclosure, put it in one or two plastic bags (suck out all the air from them) and make sure they are air tight, if they arent your drive will be dead for sure. Put the drive in the freezer for an hour or two. After you take it out, you have to be really quick and put it in your computer.

If the drive starts to live copy the files as fast as you can (take the ones you want the most first), as you may have 2-20 minutes on you to do this before the drive will heat up and die again. Some people have better results when they let the harddrive be in the freezer for 24 hours, but the more times you put it in the freezer the more damaged it will be.

Good luck, and report back if you get it to live in some way

 

[cubin']

Backup now. Trust me

 

[enigmaindex]

Okay thanks for the tips. Im going to start it back up soon and try to copy the files i need the most to my hardrive, but first i need to free up some space so yeah, thanks for the tips.

And that freezer method is probably the most bizarre thing ive heard lol, but as you said i may have to resort to that.

Will report back.

And thanks.

 

[DEF-]

And that freezer method is probably the most bizarre thing ive heard lol, but as you said i may have to resort to that.

Completely agree. But whats even more bizarre is that it works alot of the times to recover precious data

 

[enigmaindex]

Okay so i started getting everything off it. I got three quaters through and it died. I tried the freeze method to get the rest off and it worked. So thanks for the idea DEF.

 

[shaunj66]

I'd have to agree, any sign that your HDD is about to die - do a backup immediately before it's too late. Heck, just backup regularly. HDD deaths are common. I've had about 5 main HDD's in my life time that have completely died on me, mostly Maxtor's actually.

 

[Scorpei]

All of my harddrives have NEVER had that problem aside from 3 drives: 1 from Samsung (which was actually already a replacement sent to me by Maxtor for a dead drive I had) 2 from Maxtor. Any drive I have from seagate or WD still function perfectly (that includes the drives in my sparcstation5 eventhough that thing is OLD).

Well, one drive does have that problem but that is an external one which does that if it doesn't have enough power to run (say it is connected to an inproperly powered USB connection).

 

[dilav]

My WD Passport always had that problem, when i first got mine it clicks, tried it on different pcs, so i exchanged it and it does the same thing, exchanged it once more n it didnt click, after a few month it now clicks, im going to get a 1/2 to 1 tb 3.5" drive and have a enclosure n back stuff up, u should back yours up also. Hard drives are quite cheap now, around 260 for 1 tb, not sure how good 1tb are since there are still quite new.