Hard drive clicking/beeping noise

[Cbrooks]

I have a student here that dropped his laptop while it was running and now it no longer boots and I can't get it to show up by hooking it up to my computer via a sata to usb cable.

It will not show up in the normal program I use.. (Zero Assumption Recovery)

Am i out of options here? My boss wants me to take it to best buy and have them look at it.............................................................

 

[MobileTechie]

You're better off hooking it up directly to the ATA bus rather than putting USB in the middle. Then you can see if the BIOS can see it. If it can't then really you're looking at 3rd party data recovery.

I wouldn't have thought Best Buy was the best bet.

 

[iisjman07]

+1, see if it appears in the BIOS when hooked directly to the motherboard. Under no circumstance take the drive to Best Buy!

 

[Cbrooks]

You're better off hooking it up directly to the ATA bus rather than putting USB in the middle. Then you can see if the BIOS can see it. If it can't then really you're looking at 3rd party data recovery.

I wouldn't have thought Best Buy was the best bet.

Thanks for the advice. I will probably have to take this drive home to be able to do that... All we have here are laptops/rack servers.

 

[joydivision]

I am confused are you a techie working for a university or something?

I wouldn't hold up too much hope though if the drive is making a clicking noise.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

yea if the drive is making a noise, you can pretty much assume that it is bad/going bad

 

[Xander]

I had a customer a few years ago that, as soon as I walked into the room I was overwhelmed by the clicking noise of the hard drive. I told him that it's the sound of a bad hard drive and we should backup his data immediately.

"That noise? It's been doing that for a couple of years now."

 

[Knightsman]

I had a customer a few years ago that, as soon as I walked into the room I was overwhelmed by the clicking noise of the hard drive. I told him that it's the sound of a bad hard drive and we should backup his data immediately.

"That noise? It's been doing that for a couple of years now."

Ticking Time Bomb!




--------

 

[Xander]

Yup. That's what I told him. I did convince him to get his stuff backed up, at least.

 

[Cbrooks]

So I still wasn't able to access it while hooked directly up to my computer.. I'm pretty sure this things a goner but my boss still wants me to take it to geek squad.... Maybe they can use vodoo and reconstruct the platters

 

[iisjman07]

So I still wasn't able to access it while hooked directly up to my computer.. I'm pretty sure this things a goner but my boss still wants me to take it to geek squad.... Maybe they can use vodoo and reconstruct the platters

If they take it to a clean room then they can work real miracles on drives, however clean room-recovery is expensive without going to geek squad, and it's geek squad; they'll probably say the drive is infected it'll cost another $1000

 

[parker.casey]

Guys ... if it was dropped and it's clicking, the data is lost and she needs a new drive. At the very least, the data is on its way out, and she still needs a new drive. And no, Best Buy can't do a damn thing about it.

 

[Xander]

The data is probably there but, as iisjman has said, they'd need a clean room to recover it properly. If the heads are broken, it's not conclusive that the platters are necessarily shot, too.

 

[parker.casey]

The data is probably there but, as iisjman has said, they'd need a clean room to recover it properly. If the heads are broken, it's not conclusive that the platters are necessarily shot, too.

Other than for forensics, a cleanroom-involved recovery is WAY out of anyone's price range.

 

[AdamsAPlus]

Please convince him to take it anywhere besides Best Buy. I hear so many complaints from my customers about them.

 

[mkeathley]

The Geek Squad won't be able to do anything with it. They are in general extremely low paid and skilelled techs with only basic knowledge of computers. It sounds like you know more than they do.

www.DriveSavers.com can recover the data for you. Yes it will cost a bit, but they are very very likly to be able to recover it. They are professional who do this and only this. They have literally recovered data from sunken ships.

Use Discount code "DS24166" and you get 10% off.

*note thats my companies discount code and yes we make a commision off it if you use that code, but you also get a discount off the normal direct price. So its win/win

 

[mkeathley]

Oh and the Geek Squad will charge you $59.99 to tell you if they can recover it, and they can't.

But Drive Savers will check it out for free. Then give you a exact price to recover the data.

 

[cyain]

I've had this issue recently with a customer. The drive was clicking and I was getting the "insert boot media" error on startup. The customer does photography and was willing to spend a large amount of money to recover the data. I started calling around and found it would be a minimum of $1000 to have clean room work done.

I found that if the drive is clicking, the worst thing you can do is keep power to it. This will promote further data loss.

 

[parker.casey]

OH! Have you tried putting the drive in the freezer overnight and trying again? I've managed to get at least partial recovery that way.

 

[Knightsman]

OH! Have you tried putting the drive in the freezer overnight and trying again? I've managed to get at least partial recovery that way.

I had one I left in the Freeze for a month. It finally worked. Freezing overnight didnt a week diddt, but a month did lol.