Hard Drive Salvaging

[Tibro]

are the clicks coming from the actual PC unit? or through the speakers?

[Sirius]

It comes from the hard drive itself. I opened up the tower the day it started doing it and isolated the hard drive box from it's attachment and it was coming from inside.

By now I'm also pretty sure it's not a heating problem. I've had the comp on now for 2 hours and it's still on, I must've transfered about a gig and a half off it now. What I think happened is somehow some sectors on the HD got damaged on that day and are no longer readable. If I touch any of the files that are on those bad sectors it starts the clicking and freezes up the PC.

So I guess it's like going through a minefield; I just have to go through trial and error and avoid those spots. So far I've only encountered about 2-3 folders with files in the bad sector areas. Havent found any important files afflicted by it yet.

The only thing I still don't understand is how time changes anything. If I try booting up the pc again within minutes or often within the same hour as when it froze up it just starts up on the bad sector it stopped on and can't even start loading windows. Lengthier amounts of time though somehow seem to get the hard drive reader off the bad sectors while it's off (?)

[Darkmoor]

you could do chkdsk with the /F and /R options for the drive. It locates the bad sectors and tries to recover any readable information.

Start -> Run -> cmd -> chkdsk c: /f /r

Replace c with the appropriate drive letter of course.

[Charles]

This might sound crazy but it works. Put your hard drive in a static and moisture free bag then place it in your freezer and leave it for several hours. Now pop it into your computer and quickly backup all of your important files before it heats up. You might have to repeat this several times to get all of your data. I've done it before and it worked, I managed to save all of my important files from a dying hard drive.