So my good ol' Samsung USB hard disk drive decided not to spin up when I plugged it in today. Instead, it's making a clicking noise - "the click of death" as it is known, if I'm not mistaken. Now, I looked inside the case and found out that it has a standard 2.5" HDD in there, hooked up to a USB controller of some kind.
The warranty expired years ago - Samsung doesn't even sell this specific model anymore - so I thought, should I open the actual HDD and see if the problem is caused by the r/w heads derping out or if the motor or the platter(s) are stuck in some way? Or should I just take the HDD out and try plugging it into another PC?
Duh One thing I noticed, though, was that the platters did not spin at all. Aren't they supposed to spin up before the heads start moving back and forth? I'm under the impression that the clicking is caused by the heads being unable to find the start sector thingy on the drive (which they obviously can't find if the platters aren't spinning).
But, since I've got nothing to lose, I might just try the magnet trick or putting it in the freezer etc. I'll have to buy a new one anyways. If I could make it run for even 10 minutes it'd be enough time to get the really important stuff backed up.
Well, I put it in the freezer for 15 minutes and it somehow came back to life. It seems that no data was lost but I'm not so sure about the integrity of said data. I'll have to copy all 250 GBs to my PC to be completely sure.
The drive sounds pretty old. If I were you, I'd get a new one. Even after putting this one in the freezer, It might not last much longer.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
AMD FX 8350 | CM Hyper 212 evo | ASUS M5A99FX PRO R.20 | 20gb DDR3 1333 MHz | WD Blue 1TB | XFX Radeon HD 7850 2gb 950mhz OC | EVGA 500B 500 watt | Zalman Z9 Plus |
Putting it in the freezer won't work all the time, what you've done is made the poor things pain worse.
Start it up and do a chkdsk of it in CMD (as an administrator), you just open it as an admin and type: chkdsk c:\ (except it would be the drive letter of the Hard Drive, so it could be e:\ or f:\, etc).
But yeah, get everything off that Hard Drive as quickly as you can as it will die and lose all your data pretty quickly, then I suggest doing fun experiments with it, like making sparks and stuff c:
Yeah, freezing it isn't the best option but it was enough to get it started again. It appears the platters were stuck in some way, thus causing the heads swing back and forth while trying to find the data required for starting.
The files are now being copied to a NAS drive. No errors so far, but only time will tell..
Putting it in the freezer won't work all the time, what you've done is made the poor things pain worse.
Start it up and do a chkdsk of it in CMD (as an administrator), you just open it as an admin and type: chkdsk c:\ (except it would be the drive letter of the Hard Drive, so it could be e:\ or f:\, etc).
But yeah, get everything off that Hard Drive as quickly as you can as it will die and lose all your data pretty quickly, then I suggest doing fun experiments with it, like making sparks and stuff c:
Heating and cooling of the drives when they start to fail is actually a very good back-up/hail mary method of getting data off of a drive. Cooling the drive causes the spindle to shrink, just enough to let the disks spin up again. I have a lot of older friends who've been doing this for 15+ years now, It seems they have anywhere from a 60%-80% chance of that method working.
OP, good thinking, get that data off now, the drive might not survive another spin-up.
Alright, I managed to get all the files off the disk - well, almost. Only 85 files out of more than 150,000 refused to copy, but luckily those were music files I already have on my phone
What surprises me the most is that the drive appears to be working now, even after being powered off for several hours. I've tried it with different computers and every one of them recognized the drive. I even managed to format it without any errors Not going to trust it anymore though, time to get a new one. Might just invest a bit more money in it to get something that does not break down. Although, the old one was not bad either - it lasted for almost 5 years.
The warranty expired years ago - Samsung doesn't even sell this specific model anymore - so I thought, should I open the actual HDD and see if the problem is caused by the r/w heads derping out or if the motor or the platter(s) are stuck in some way? Or should I just take the HDD out and try plugging it into another PC?
But, since I've got nothing to lose, I might just try the magnet trick or putting it in the freezer etc. I'll have to buy a new one anyways. If I could make it run for even 10 minutes it'd be enough time to get the really important stuff backed up.
Also, where did all the other replies go?
AMD FX 8350 | CM Hyper 212 evo | ASUS M5A99FX PRO R.20 | 20gb DDR3 1333 MHz | WD Blue 1TB | XFX Radeon HD 7850 2gb 950mhz OC | EVGA 500B 500 watt | Zalman Z9 Plus |
Will do. Besides, I've been thinking about getting a new one for quite a long time since this one was always full.
Yeah, freezing it isn't the best option but it was enough to get it started again. It appears the platters were stuck in some way, thus causing the heads swing back and forth while trying to find the data required for starting.
The files are now being copied to a NAS drive. No errors so far, but only time will tell..
Heating and cooling of the drives when they start to fail is actually a very good back-up/hail mary method of getting data off of a drive. Cooling the drive causes the spindle to shrink, just enough to let the disks spin up again. I have a lot of older friends who've been doing this for 15+ years now, It seems they have anywhere from a 60%-80% chance of that method working.
OP, good thinking, get that data off now, the drive might not survive another spin-up.
That's what he's doing, and no, not any old one will do. He needs one that's reliable, not the cheapest thing you can find.
What surprises me the most is that the drive appears to be working now, even after being powered off for several hours. I've tried it with different computers and every one of them recognized the drive. I even managed to format it without any errors Not going to trust it anymore though, time to get a new one. Might just invest a bit more money in it to get something that does not break down. Although, the old one was not bad either - it lasted for almost 5 years.