HDD making beeping noise :D

StigHelmer

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Jun 7, 2005
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My Diamondmax9+ 160Gb P-ata drive has died on me.. the peculiar thing about it is, the drive is making these weird noises, beeps even.. Its like a telefone ringing!! 8O The drive was dying on me, so i tried to make it work by chaching cables, jumpers, etc. Then, when i started up the drive today, just to see if it would work, even a bit, It started screaming in agony...

Now the drive wont even spin, and I'm worried I've lost all my data on it forever :( And i was wondering, any of you ever heard a HDD beep? And is there any chance for me to get my files back?
 

fishmahn

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Jul 6, 2004
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I've heard rings/beeps/screams/etc. from drives. Usually that's an indication that the drive motor is bad, the heads are blocked (or the head motor is bad) or (depending on the scream) there's a short or some dust/hair/something causing a short on the PCB.

Remove it from the system, blow it clean with canned air to make sure there's no hair or anything causing a short and try again. If no go, try freezing it in a plastic bag overnight. If it works, you have an hour (about) to get your stuff off of it.

You can also try some drive repair software (spinright and others) but if it doesn't even spin up, that won't help.

Last option, and this depends on how much the data is worth to you, is to send it to a drive repair place. They have the cleanroom and techs that can take the platters out of your dead drive and put them into a good drive to get your data. Needless to say that gets expensive (many will look at your drive for $100, and the clock starts ticking there at what seems like lawyers rates).

Mike.
 

StigHelmer

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Thx for the reply.. Have to try the freezer thing, I've heard of it but didn't really think it could work...

And i don't think I'll send the drive to the recovery you mentioned, those mp3's arent THAT important :)