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Hard Drive Dead - HELP!

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by anonymous1357

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I have a toshiba m105-3401 laptop and the other day i left my computer on overnight. I woke up to a bunch of clicking noises (not very loud, but enough to make you wonder). I moved the mouse and saw a blank windows xp desktop screen. I shut down the computer by holding the power button. I then tried to power back up by got just a bunch of clicking. The hard drive is not recognized by the bios anymore. Is there anything i can do besides send this off to an expensive data recovery center.

6 replies

by Former member

Buy another hdd and a external harddrive caddy/case , take out the old one and replace with the new, then put the old drive in the external case (you can connect it with a usb cable later) Load on your windows operating system and then do all the updates, when finished hock up your external hdd and then transfer your files over to your new hdd.
Hope all works out for you.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by Former member

Your harddrive is failing that is why you are hearing noises from it.

by anonymous1357

I also took it to a bunch of IT departments and they said that they were unable to recognize the hard drive with their boot cd's. Are you sure that if i move it to the external hard drive i'll be able to read the drive? The way they explained it to me is that there may be some physical damage to the drive. The hard drive is getting power but only clicks when it's started. There bios also no longer recognizes the drive.

by Former member

You have to work fast, unless you have a full blown backup where as all you do is switch the drives over in the bios.. The drive will work but it will have to be cooled/frozen so that you can access it. So you can try that..Make sure that you place it in freezer bags (so as not to get any water in the drive) and then put it in the freezer for three days, then take it out and put it in the external usb case and copy all your files over. This will have to be done fast though because once it starts heating up the clicking noise will start and the drive will stop. Hope this helps you.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by robo_dev

I would remove the drive and install it in a USB enclosure (this will allow the drive to be read by a desktop or a working laptop computer).

Attach the usb cable to the drive and seal it in a ziplock bag, so the usb cable sticks out. You don't want condensation on the drive electronics.

Put the drive/enclosure in freezer for at least eight hours.

Immediately connect the drive to the Desktop or working laptop PC and see if the other machine can read it.

You may have to repeat the freezing several times since the failure mode may recur as the drive heats up. I've had better luck when also wrapping the drive with those blue flexible freezer packs to keep it colder longer.

Sometimes the orientation may help a little (like holding it upside down or on-edge.

I've had to deal with data recovery on five drives over the years. The 'freezer trick' worked perfectly twice, worked partially twice, and not at all in one case.

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