Did my hard drive break?
 

I as just browsing the internet when my harddrive began making repetitive "searching" sounds. It didn't stop, and my computer slowed down. I forced it to restart, then it wouldn't get past the "XP load screen."

Now it says I need to change the boot list, so I went to BIOS and it doesn't see a hard drive.

What gives? It's an older 40gig IBM Deskstar drive that has never given me problems before.

Thanks
-Tim

If the BIOS can't see it anymore, then ,yea, you may have a problem with it (short bersion: It's dead, Jim'). Can you drop it into another machine, or put a new primary into your machine and make this the secondary?

Doesn't look good. My brother's HDD was making that same sound. He decided to use disk defragmentor. The sound went away. I eventually talked him into backing things up and replacing the drive, since I had my doubts how long it would run.

Deskstar = Deathstar = Likely to die earlier that similar drives.

-SF

I'm surprised it lasted this long. I've had 2 deskstars go on me...the first one, and a week after I RMA'd it, it's replacement. I've got one of the new Hitachi deskstars...works much better than the originals :-D

Yes.

Not to add insult to injury, but just wanted to add a vote for yes on the hard drive dying.

It's my experience that when the drive start "ca-chunking" it's on it's last leg. Sometimes they last long enough for you to get the info off, sometimes they don't.

As other's have mentioned, try hooking it up in another system as a secondary. I've been able to recover data like that before.

Good luck.

Thanks guys, I'll go ahead and look into another drive and try to get this one hooked up to pull the info off.

Peace
-T

Did you know that there is a recall on the IBM Deskstar HDs? I had a 40Gig replaced after it "Died".

Goto Hitachi's web site and look around their support section.

Somebody sued IBM/Hitachi and now if your HD is still under warrenty then they will replace it for the cost of shipping.

oh its a deathstar! um yeah that sucks, contact IBM. i think there was a class action suit against them for it, malfunctioning heat sensor that calculated teh expansion of the hard drive wrong.

if it is a death star, your screWed

Thanks again. To be honest, I'd say the drive is about 5 years old (from when 40gig at 5400 was a nice size). Will it be too late to seek compensation?

-T

yeah, it's too late. most manufacturers give a 1 year warranty, and some of their products have a 3 year warranty. 5 years unfortunately is about the expected lifespan for a HD, especially if it's on a lot.