Hard drive problems

[ITsonic]

This something wrong wit my Seagate barracuda 7200.7 160 Gbytes hard drive, for a few months I have been using BT-300 from Bytecc I save files and music. Yesterday it stop working well one partition stopped working. This has happened before but not like this, everytime I would use it it would pick up both partitions now it only picks up one plus it clicks 3 times then repeats. Also it format is NTFS the same format as vista uses but the hard drive Seagate barracuda 7200.7 uses XP. Is there a problem?

 

[COLGeek]

The "clicks" are the sign of a dying hard drive. You should back up your critical files and replace the drive as soon as possible. Good luck!

 

[ITsonic]

The "clicks" are the sign of a dying hard drive. You should back up your critical files and replace the drive as soon as possible. Good luck!

How can I back up my file when this thing is clicking, windows explorer keeps locking up and stops responding everytime I do that?

 

[COLGeek]

Get a new HDD and install it in your computer and put your old one in an external drive enclosure. Use a program like Clonezilla (google it) to copy the contents from the old drive to the new drive. Otherwise, reload your OS and applications on the new drive and then copy only the files/folders needed from the old drive.

BTW, clicking/failing drives don't get better with time.

Good luck!

 

[ITsonic]

Get a new HDD and install it in your computer and put your old one in an external drive enclosure. Use a program like Clonezilla (google it) to copy the contents from the old drive to the new drive. Otherwise, reload your OS and applications on the new drive and then copy only the files/folders needed from the old drive.

BTW, clicking/failing drives don't get better with time.

Good luck!

Thanks for the tip I'll remember that. But i'm not using the drive inside the PC it's outside the PC.

 

[COLGeek]

I understand now. So the clicking drive is an external (missed your reference to the enclosure....dang my old, slow eyes) drive and you are using only for data. Is that correct?

Or, are you actually booting from the external drive?

 

[ITsonic]

I understand now. So the clicking drive is an external (missed your reference to the enclosure....dang my old, slow eyes) drive and you are using only for data. Is that correct?

Or, are you actually booting from the external drive?

No the hard drive it shelf That I had came from my Dell I had to buy a new one because I thought my 20GB was dead Guess I was wrong, anyway didn't you read the beginning of the tread? I said “I have been using BT-300 from Bytecc I save files and music. One partition (for XP 127 GB) was for the OS the other 21 GB the one that I have been using for months I partition that for whatever I needed to do When my mom didn’t help me fix my Pc that is down in the basement I had no choice but to use the drive outside the pc.

 

[COLGeek]

No the hard drive it shelf That I had came from my Dell I had to buy a new one because I thought my 20GB was dead Guess I was wrong, anyway didn't you read the beginning of the tread? I said “I have been using BT-300 from Bytecc I save files and music. One partition (for XP 127 GB) was for the OS the other 21 GB the one that I have been using for months I partition that for whatever I needed to do When my mom didn’t help me fix my Pc that is down in the basement I had no choice but to use the drive outside the pc.

Got it on storing music and files. Understood on 2 partitions. So, are you booting from the external hard drive or not?

What are the basic specs for your system? Be sure to list all storage devices.

 

[ITsonic]

Got it on storing music and files. Understood on 2 partitions. So, are you booting from the external hard drive or not?

What are the basic specs for your system? Be sure to list all storage devices.

No it a normal HDD I was using. If you want to know specs go to [Solved] What type of case is this?

 

[COLGeek]

Nothing there describing the CPU, GPU, memory, mobo, OS, HDDs, optical drives, etc

 

[mightymaxio]

Hopefully you can pull your data off that hard drive and quick, Ive seen clicking hard drives in the help desk head crash anywhere from 1 hour to a couple of months after the clicking. Otherwise data recovery might cost a fortune if it is imperative data to you, something upwards of 5000$ to start off. Although if it can no longer recognize a partition and you want to pull stuff off before it head crashes, i recommend a couple of programs.

Diskgenious is one that i use that recovers lost partitions and data which is nice if the partition tables get corrupt and you can no longer see that partition.

HDat2 is one that i use if the hard drive is beginning to have corruption because this fixes the corrupted bits and replaces them with 0's which wipes the data but allows you to use the hard disk.

Vvard which is similar to Hdat2 except that it pulls good uncorrupted sectors and replaces the bad sectors with the good sectors, this is better if you dont want to loose some data because instead of fixing the problem with 0's and loosing data you just loose some freespace.

Diskdigger recovers files from a partition that is no longer readable and i have used this program with huge success. Just remember if you can recover data using this program, nothing will have a file name attached to it because of the parition tables being gone.

Hope these programs help and good luck.

 

[ITsonic]

Nothing there describing the CPU, GPU, memory, mobo, OS, HDDs, optical drives, etc

Ok ok CPU: Sempron Athlon 64 processor, GPU: On board Controller Embedded in nVidia C51G, memory: 1.25 GB, mobo: K8MC51G, OS: XP pro, HDDs: well you already know that one., optical drives: one CD-RW and one DVD-rom by memorex, PSU: Antec Earthwatts 650
more info about the mobo here

Hopefully you can pull your data off that hard drive and quick, Ive seen clicking hard drives in the help desk head crash anywhere from 1 hour to a couple of months after the clicking. Otherwise data recovery might cost a fortune if it is imperative data to you, something upwards of 5000$ to start off. Although if it can no longer recognize a partition and you want to pull stuff off before it head crashes, i recommend a couple of programs.

Diskgenious is one that i use that recovers lost partitions and data which is nice if the partition tables get corrupt and you can no longer see that partition.

HDat2 is one that i use if the hard drive is beginning to have corruption because this fixes the corrupted bits and replaces them with 0's which wipes the data but allows you to use the hard disk.

Vvard which is similar to Hdat2 except that it pulls good uncorrupted sectors and replaces the bad sectors with the good sectors, this is better if you dont want to loose some data because instead of fixing the problem with 0's and loosing data you just loose some freespace.

Diskdigger recovers files from a partition that is no longer readable and i have used this program with huge success. Just remember if you can recover data using this program, nothing will have a file name attached to it because of the parition tables being gone.

Hope these programs help and good luck.

Ok are the programs free?

 

[COLGeek]

Another good one to recover data and free is recuva. Just go to:

piriform.com/recuva

 

[mightymaxio]

All of those programs i listed are free although diskdigger has a paid version that is nice to use too, instead of having to click ok on every file it doesnt pop up a message box.

 

[ITsonic]

All of those programs i listed are free although diskdigger has a paid version that is nice to use too, instead of having to click ok on every file it doesnt pop up a message box.

Ok thanks but how I am going to use it when windows explorer keeps locking up and stops responding everytime I plug it in?

 

[COLGeek]

How many hard drives do you have? If more than one, you can boot with a live version of Linux (I suggest Ubuntu) and then copy what you need to the good HDD. That will allow you to save your critical files.

Then you can replace the defective drive when possible and reload your OS. None of the apps that run inside of the Windows install you are having trouble with are going to work well (if at all) as you are describing the problem.

 

[ITsonic]

How many hard drives do you have? If more than one, you can boot with a live version of Linux (I suggest Ubuntu) and then copy what you need to the good HDD. That will allow you to save your critical files.

Then you can replace the defective drive when possible and reload your OS. None of the apps that run inside of the Windows install you are having trouble with are going to work well (if at all) as you are describing the problem.

Well I do have a WD Caviar blue 500 GB which i'm trying to set up to replace the one in my dimension C521 I already Partition 3 drives on this HDD already so I could use that.

Huh? I don't get what your trying to say here?

"None of the apps that run inside of the Windows install you are having trouble with are going to work well (if at all) as you are describing the problem."

 

[mightymaxio]

These are all on a hirens boot disc or a ultimate boot cd boot disc which you can boot from dos and access the utilities including a nice little mini XP program which loads a bootable windows xp to ram which allows you to run ones that you need windows to work with.

The nice thing is with mini XP which is on Hirens boot CD, you do not need a working hard drive to boot onto it just at least 256 mb of ram and you can load it and the utilites of of it. You can also run mostly all the hard drive testing tools such as HDat2 and ViVard from dos programs under the hard drive testing option.

Found Here:
1) http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
2) http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

 

[COLGeek]

Well I do have a WD Caviar blue 500 GB which i'm trying to set up to replace the one in my dimension C521 I already Partition 3 drives on this HDD already so I could use that.

Huh? I don't get what your trying to say here?

"None of the apps that run inside of the Windows install you are having trouble with are going to work well (if at all) as you are describing the problem."

When you say Windows locks up, for example, when trying to access the volume, an application that needs to access the HDD in question will likely not work. That is why a couple of us have given you options to keep that from happening by booting from another OS and then moving the files you need to save.

 

[ITsonic]

Ok I did what you did COLGeek I installed Ubuntu WD drive but I had to shrink some of the Back up space to do it. I moved all files from the Seagate HDD to the WD HDD, I seem that a one of my emulators VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2 was acting up it worked fine until a few day ago I had to delete it but I found another one so all I need to do is Erase the bad partition and partition again right?

 

[COLGeek]

Ok I did what you did COLGeek I installed Ubuntu WD drive but I had to shrink some of the Back up space to do it. I moved all files from the Seagate HDD to the WD HDD, I seem that a one of my emulators VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2 was acting up it worked fine until a few day ago I had to delete it but I found another one so all I need to do is Erase the bad partition and partition again right?

You can try just formatting the partition. However, you need to verify that the HDD is in good working order (check for bad sectors). Use your Windows tools to error check the disk.

 

[ITsonic]

You can try just formatting the partition. However, you need to verify that the HDD is in good working order (check for bad sectors). Use your Windows tools to error check the disk.

Ok I'll try that.

 

[COLGeek]

Ok I'll try that.

You can go to Seagate's website and download and install SeaTools to check out your HDD as well. Free and thorough.

 

[ITsonic]

You can go to Seagate's website and download and install SeaTools to check out your HDD as well. Free and thorough.

I already did.

 

[COLGeek]

I already did.

What are the results of the tests then?