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Is my HDD dead?

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - Is my HDD dead?

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My SATA WD Caviar 250 went crazy yesterday.

It started to make a very strange, clicking noise and my XP froze. When I rebooted my PC, my mobo couldn't recognize it and eventually it was listed as "HAWK ROM ... something" sized ~80mb. It was my system drive, so I was rather pissed off.

I put my XP install CD in and tried CHKDSK. I got a message "drive has unrecoverable damage" or something like that. I couldn't format it, nor I was able to delete any system files of the very few listed after I typed DIR.

What could cause the disk to behave like that? A virus or was it my fault? I had overclocked my PC, sometimes I've pushed it rather far, up to 3.8ghz not knowing that my mobo sets the PCIE freq to 118...

Can I do anything to make it work again or is it completely dead?

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Go to Wd and download the latest diag utility,although any noise coming from a hdd is not a good thing,the diag util will make a floppy from which it will run..

Reply to dokk2

hmmmm...clicks 'o death....you could always try the freezer trick if you really need to get something off of it. You only have about 15 min. or so after freezing it before it would lock up again. It's worked for me once or twice. As far as repairing ? try the manufacturer's tools like dokk2 said....

------------------------------ I always have to learn the hard way, it's just not enough fun doing it the right way.
Reply to ShadowFlash

I did a bit of googling and found the answer: a lot of ppl seem to have had the same problem with WD's HDDs.

All I can say is "no more Western Digital for me, never" :non:

The drive is dead and nothing can revive it. I don't feel like sending it back to WD, my future purchase choices will be punishing enough. :fou:

Thanks for your replies, guys.

------------------------------ E7200 @ 3.42GHz > GA-P31-DS3L > 4Gb DDR2 > 4850 512Mb > X-Fi Platinum
Reply to andyKCIUK

ive been doing good with Seagate. Maybe give them a try. But for future reference, its always a good thing to make a backup just in case. Norton Ghost gives step by step if you never made a backup before. But Seagate has always done the job for me. The only reason I ever needed to buy a new one was to upgrade.

Reply to FearTheGorgotron

Western Digital has bit me more than once also.....I don't hold a grudge though. One of my good friends practictly worships WD and has never had a problem. I love seagate, but he's had several fail. Nothing's perfect........

------------------------------ I always have to learn the hard way, it's just not enough fun doing it the right way.
Reply to ShadowFlash

In fairness, my WD lasted three years... that's not that bad. But on the other hand I have an IDE Maxtor 40Gb for waaay longer than that and it's been performing admirably .

Fortunately I always backup my data. I'm a musician and have a PC-based recording studio, I would be pretty f***ed if I'd relied on the WD only.

Maybe I'll just get a SSD.

------------------------------ E7200 @ 3.42GHz > GA-P31-DS3L > 4Gb DDR2 > 4850 512Mb > X-Fi Platinum
Reply to andyKCIUK

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