My friend's hardrive might be dead....

[shadowtheweak]

My friend's hardrive makes strange noises within 5 seconds of booting. It sounds like the read/write head is skipping or trying to search for something. She has a dell 4600C and her warranty is long gone. The bios says there is a keyboard error, then after a minute is says it can't find the hard drive. I think that either the hardrive is dead, or that there's a virus. I don't really know what to do if there is a virus because i've never really had to deal with them.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ethel]

Sounds like the hard drive might be dead. Here's what to do:

1) Check the cables (you never know)
2) Take the drive out and put it in your PC to see if you can get your PC to recognise it (if it's ATA, put it on an ATA cable by itself)

 

[shadowtheweak]

So we took it out.. checked all the connections.. put it back in.. and the same thing happened.. we went through the BIOS and it said that no hard drives were recognized.
wtf

 

[halfasleep]

Same thing hapenned to me last week and I'm pretty sure my hard drive is dead, it is not recognised , can't even see it in dos.

 

[kittle]

are you hearing a clicking sound?

if so, then yes the drive is dying. My guess is its been making these noises for a while?

For future reference when a drive starts making clicking or unusual noises its time to replace it -- FAST. it could last for a month.. or it could die that evening.. but it Will die.

 

[fredgiblet]

If you have critical data you can try sticking in a bag then putting it in the freezer for a little bit. I've heard several times that that can give a few minutes of functionality to a dead drive, maybe enough to grab the most important files off of it.

 

[shadowtheweak]

It only started clicking recently.
I'm pretty sure the drive is dead and I don't have another system to put it in to really check.

 

[scorch]

Ive used the freezer trick a few times myself. When I did that at a previous job to attempt to get data off my boss nearly fell off his chair laughing, it was the dumbest thing he had seen he said. Well after about 30 min in the freezer it worked long enough to get the data off. The problem with that hard drive was that it would power up but it didn't sound like the heads were able to move and since cold makes metal contract it gave it enough clearence to move.

 

[shadowtheweak]

Is the freezer trick a one time deal, or can that be used a few times before the drive is completely shot?

 

[fredgiblet]

Is the freezer trick a one time deal, or can that be used a few times before the drive is completely shot?

From what I understand it can be used repeatedly, but probably with steadily worsening effects. I'd say forget anything that you can replace on that drive and just grab the irreplaceable stuff.