[Unknown Target]

Hey guys. This morning I woke up and my computer was on a black screen "Please select correct boot device". I assumed it was like this because of a power outage (they're frequent where I live).
So I restarted the computer and all is fine. However, infrequently, I hear these loud CLICK CLICK CLICK coming from my computer. I don't know where they're coming from, but I don't exactly feel comftorable hearing them. Any ideas?

[aldo_14]

Something to do with the CD drive/s or HDD, I guess.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Yeah UT, back up pronto if you can still access your HDD, sounds like it might be on its last legs.
[/color]

[Taristin]

I'll third that. HDD's click before they die.  I lost one to that already, and it was only a 2 year old drive.


BACK IT UP ASAP!

[Hippo]

I fourth the hard drive proposition.

[Unknown Target]

I have two though, I don't know which one it is!

[Genryu]

HDD. No doubt about it. Hope you don't mind loosing data, since when it begins to click, it's generally very difficult to back up.

[Unknown Target]

Well, how do I figure which HD is failing?

[Kie99]

What's with all the computer trouble lately?

[Scuddie]

Sign of the apocalypse, kie.  Sign of the apocalypse.

Anyway, harddrives click when they're on their last leg, true.  But I have an old 8 gig drive that clicks, whines, grinds, and everything else.  But it's still running strong, and I use it for page files and temporary files.  It's been three years since it was acting up, but I dont see it going any time soon.

Anyhow, you have a choice.  Be on the safe side and backup everything and order a replacement ASAP, or be on the wild side and use the drive as much as you can before killing it.  Or maybe you can do both :\

[Hippo]

pull one out, start up, listen. If noise is heard, replace removed drive, and back up other drive.

if no noise heard, replace drive, and back up same drive.

[Unknown Target]

It's not a constant click. I've heard it twice, then used the computer for the entire day. I just shut it down for about 30 seconds, then turned it back on again with no problems thus far. So rebooting it is a problem, as only one of the drives can boot into windows - thus, I'd never be able to tell whether or not the drive was functioning, unless I sat in front of a computer screen for all eternity.

Is there any way I can do it software-wise?

[Liberator]

joo hard drive ees dying...save vhat joo can, vhile joo can.

[Bobboau]

dead hard drive

[Unknown Target]

Which one is dying? Help me or you won't get a new installment of the movie for quite awhile (because my computer would be brooooken)

[Trivial Psychic]

I had a similar problem with an IBM 30GB drive some time back.  Said drive is now dead, but it was some time between the first instances of the clicks, and the death of the drive.  When it first occurred, I had just bought a CD burner.  I was trying to burn some videos to save space on the main drive and it would always freeze up at one point and start clicking.  It turned out that there was a bad sector where one of those movie files was being stored.  I confirmed this when I tried to play the file and it started clicking again.  It was about 2 years later when I was performing a windows update that I guess it tried to write system files to a bad sector and it refused to work after that.  Eventually, the computer wouldn't read the drive at all.  Fortunately, just months before I had bought a 120GB WDC drive and had copied many files there to make use of the greater space.  I simply reinstalled my OS onto the new drive and went from there.

While your current drive may not necessarily be in imminent danger, it is a sign of death, either sooner or later.  I'd backup first, then run scandisk and make sure to an integrity scan as part of it.  Do this probably once a month.

[IceFire]

Hard Drive.

Figure out which one (probably your C: as you indicated having trouble with a primary boot) and back it up before it dies.

Do you have your computer on a surge protector?  Power outages and the resulting restoration of power are bad for computers.  Never plug directly into the wall.  Always have a surge protector.  Mine is good to 3500 joules.  But I still unplug in a thunderstorm...nothing stops a direct lightning hit.

[Unknown Target]

Probably was one of the power outages. I'll have to wait until my father gets home from his vacation before I can replace the drive though.

Will I lose any data if I copied the drive as it is now? And would any of this data damage the new HD?

[phatosealpha]

Depends.  The data somehow damaging the new HD is pretty much not gonna happen.  Whether or not you'll be able to get it though, that's a question.  If they're bad sectors in the data area, anything but the data in that specific area should be ok.  If it's in the system area, gets a little dicey.  If it's in the allocation tables, well, you're gonna have problems.

If you've got the time, you can use a full surface scan with scandisk, and it will find and mark the bad clusters.

[Kosh]

IBM 30GB drive

IBM was a bad brand of hard drive. They were good for a while, but went bad (sort of like HP PC's).


Hard drive failures can happen to any brand of hard drive, but what determines what is a good brand depends on the percentage of sold hard drives that get RMA'd before their time. The lower this percentage, the better.