So on friday my dads pc finally snuffed it, or so I think.

It was doing a virus scan, and half way through the hard drive started making a weird clicking sound, a bit like a metronome (as in it was continuous and

Then it reset its self and it wouldn't get past "Detecting IDE drives..." so I'm pretty sure it is the hard drive which is fucko'd, but could it be something like a loose connection or even the motherboard, or the IDE cable?

So what im asking is is this definately the hard drive which is dead? Im not at my dads at the minute so I cant check the connections and everything, and I doubt he would as he doesnt really know what hes doing.

Test connections, if they all look good but it still doesn't work, take it out and test it in another machine.

That ticking sound means your hard drive is dead. If you can boot back onto it, back up what you can. Otherwise you might have to boot off a different disk and copy information out (you might not even be able to do that, depending on how bad it is). It's the sound of the read/write arm on your hard drive "head banging." For some reason your controller is unable to read the data it needs or is broken in a way that won't allow it to find the data it needs. So instead, the arm swings back and forth across your platters making a nice tick or tock every time it hits the end of its reach.

The chances of data recovery: 25%
Chances of fixing the drive: < 1%

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[zok@zoklet ~]$ find jesus
find: jesus: No such file or directory
[zok@zoklet ~]$ whereis Zok
Zok: /derzok/at/gmail/dot/com http://zoklet.net/bbs/

Yeah, clicking is a hard drives way of saying goodbye to the world... I do hope you had a recent backup.

lol, my generic 30GB IDE drive has been clicking for a good 2year's now, every boot I get a hard drive failure imminent warning. But its still good, that said I dont trust it with anything bar generic film/game storage

I understand you were probably trying to explain for the simpleton, but just for the record, this is called the armature.

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[autopsy@localhost ~]$ cat you >>/dev/null && rm -rf you

has anybody had success in swapping out the old hard disks (platters) to a similar harddrive with good electronics and read/write heads and actuators intact?
just curious

I have heard stories, and yes, one day I shall try.

But first I must pick just the right epic music.

These days I backup all data....


I'd call it electronic-surgery.

Read up on methods, you might get to keep your information for the price of a hard drive instead of 500 wing-wongs.

You need a clean room and some expensive, precision equipment for that. I have heard rumors of people sealing off their bathroom, laying anti-static mats on the sink counter, and running the showers hot water for twenty minutes to get rid of the dust. Then they would set up a vacuum cleaner somewhere, to suck all the moisture out or something.

I wish hard drive manufacturers had some type of affordable service where they put platters from your dead drive into a new one.

yeah, all that sounds familiar,
but then I saw lifejunkie putting plexiglas covers on his harddrives without taking most of those precautions.
so maybe it's way easier than we think.