How to fix a Clicking Hard Drive

This could come in handy for those of you who, like me, find that a hands on approach to the inner workings of your computer is often the best way to getting good results.

Bare in mind that you need a degree of technical ability to fix this sort of problem, and also the right type of tools. The allen key style screwsa are easy to strip the thread from, so be careful.





^ this is seriously how I've fixed them in the past!!!!! lol

hahaha nice, She will never click again that is for sure. but who has one of these old drives these days..? Do they even make them anymore.? lol j/k

Lol. Yep, once a hard drive starts to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's time to get off what you want/can, and send it to the trash heap. :-)

If your hard drive is clicking, wrap it securely in plastic and throw it in the fridge for a little while. Take it out, put it back in, and quickly switch everything from that hard drive to another hard drive. The cold contracts the parts enough that you can run it for a brief time and not damage it, enabling you to salvage whatever you need.

reply to post by Legion2024


I still have 3 sata magnetic drives at about 2tb, 2 old 80gb IDE drives in my tv pc (which is dead atm) and 2 64gb solid state boot drives.

My 160gb sata which does click like this has been stuck in a drawer forever now as I'm too slack top rip it opn and reclaim the magnets, but it's why I checked that video.. lol

I have to keep all my old bits and pieces as I can't afford upgrades most of the time, as it is I'm devastated that I cannot find a single 1.44 floppy disk in this house. It used to be full of them, wall to wall floppy disk media, ide cables in every corner, psu's in the cupboards, etc.. but when I need a 1.44 to put into an ancient pc that needs floppy disk access if you somehow manage to kill the bios (looks at me) there is none to be found.

What has happened to me... and it took 5 minutes to find an old floppy data cable. And then I realised the newish psu I was using had no floppy power connector. So I had to dig out a 250 watt psu from 1850 and connect that in.

I put my router in the fridge the other day. In bits. scary thing is, it didn't fix OR kill it.

lol

woops I've let the coffee take over...

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
If your hard drive is clicking, wrap it securely in plastic and throw it in the fridge for a little while. Take it out, put it back in, and quickly switch everything from that hard drive to another hard drive. The cold contracts the parts enough that you can run it for a brief time and not damage it, enabling you to salvage whatever you need.

I read that about 12 years ago too, haha, we never did try it at work, it was easier to put in the paperwork for a new drive and tell the client that they should have stored their work on their personal network drive and not the hard drive.

We were buggers lol

I was going to do that with my ex-data drive, but there was not enough stuff on it to bother, I'd written it off anyway. I might try that tho, it's been a while so I've forgotten what was actually on it. lol

You can get an external pretty cheap, it plugs into the usb port. I have one and an external DVDRW drive too. It was good when my cd drive died and I couldn't load WOW on the laptop

www.bing.com... URE

reply to post by winofiend


lolol, Tbh i still have a 486dx still running, my first build, have not spent a dime on it since, Runs like a champ
Doom was a blast dos4gw load high mem Doom.exe. 2meg ram. When i got my first 2 ram sticks i could only use one and i still have the second one as a keyring lol just as a reminder.

reply to post by Legion2024


We took my old 486, and tossed 64 megs of ram on that sob. Which was the most it could hold. (it came with 8)

You've never seen windows 95 run so well.

reply to post by Chargeit


sweet, the 4meg sticks were extremely expensive in oz land, I could only afford the 2 meg sticks, God that just gave me chills lol remembering the sound of my tape backing up my data hahaha, If i remember right I had one of the mobo's with the math coprossesor issues and was replaced. with a new one with one mem slot.

reply to post by AfterInfinity




This guy is only partially right. Because I have had freezing work for me a few times.

Just a PSA warning. Those disk spinning at 5400-10,000rpm are ceramic and can shatter throwing out pieces. Keep the eyes protected.

The freezer trick worked more in the old days than it does on the newer drives. I am guessing that the tolerances of today's china made drives are less so the cold is not helping as much. The saying goes: "they don't make them like they used to"

reply to post by Klassified


I agree with the video. I get around it by first sticking the drive in a ziplock bag with a bag of Silica desiccant or two. I have bean bag sized ones for this very purpose. Immediately after taking the drive out, I wrap it in a clean dry cotton towel with only a space for the power and data connectors. Two reasons. First it keeps the drive colder longer and to keep the moisture from forming. Any that does is wicked away. I do have to admit that the relative humidity around these parts is low and in my cave where I work it's cold and dry to start with.

Well that was rather unexpected, but i should have known better when i seen him opening the drive up in a non clean environment also with it powered up. I have done deep drive repairs before and have had great success. Swapped out head assymblies and also the controller for the head which is inside as well behind the head Assembly. Have machine ready and new drive ready for the data Xfer, power up repaired drive and xfer data off it as fast as you can and hope there are no contaminates inside. I had a make shift clean room for the work, but its still not enough when it comes to opening them up. he's lucky that wasn't an old IBM drive with glass platters, i would have hated to have been standing that close to it after shocking it that way. Can we say shrapnel!

If there is vital data on the drive and it's worth big bucks then do nothing to it and send it to the professionals that will disassemble the drive and rebuild it. Never attempt to freeze the drive only if you are at a last resort and don't care about the data or drive. Many will say freezing is a myth. In a sense it is. It does hold some truth to it as metal contracts and expands with extreme temps. This may free up the motor or what not to allow a few minutes to get data off the drive. One problem to this expansion of metal is that the data is written on a metal disk when the metal expands and contracts you warp the surface of the platter destroying the data. So in other words never freeze the drive if you must recover data! I have come across computers that the bios won't detect drives because the rooms they was in was so cold the HD wouldn't detect till it warmed up first. So cold/hot extreme of either = bad.

Never open the drive and remove the cover! HD's are vacuum sealed with nitrogen gasses to help stop impurities in the air entering the HD, it also protects the drive from moisture fogging effect you get from moisture forming at dew point cold > hot. Just like anti fog binoculars that are gas filled. Same concept for HD.

The clicking noise of the hd in the video can actually be fixed. Takes a special screw driver to fit the screws but you basically tighten down the screws. The good thing is technology is going to ssd drives and phasing out mechanical driven HD's. With it comes better stability, no mechanical moving parts to fail, they are faster and can handle the extreme temps that hd's couldn't. List goes on. It's like going from the wheel to anti gravity and no wheel is needed. lol