Think my hard drive has expired. It’s clicking like a bstard and the pc won’t boot. Hard drive not found on the hp diagnostic test. I’ve tried taking it out and re-seating but no change. Any last throw of the dice to try before consigning it to the bin?

I don’t have anything too valuable on it that I don’t have elsewhere with the exception of some photos, maybe 3 months worth that I hadn’t backed up. How much is data recovery these days?

In the olden days we would drop them about six inches onto a hard surface. Sometimes worked.

Think that’s what caused it tbh. Dropped the pc yesterday – could try double or quits I guess.

yup the old trick, let it cool down, short sharp shock then plug it in and if it spools and reads get off what you need asap.

I have had success with the pop it in the freezer for a few hours trick. Got an hour out of a dead drive enough to recover some photos for a friend once.

Boot off some kind of linux recovery USB system and see what you can find on it.

Probably you won’t save anything but at least you’ll feel like you tried (*)

(*) after wasting a day of your life you’ll never get back.

I’ve had similar problems in the (distant) past. I had another working machine and I removed the faulty disc and installed it as a slave in the working machine – got all the data off. This doesn’t always work and does require a bit of expertise and a host machine but do-able. If you take it to a pc specialist tech shop they will be able to try the same.

(*) after wasting a day of your life you’ll never get back.

It doesn’t take that long any more, you can live boot ubuntu and try it that way 🙂

Another vote for booting from another disk / live boot CD / drive and trying that way with the original drive running as a storage drive.

Also, try software such as http://www.piriform.com/recuva

It’ll try multiple passes to hopefully recover more than simply copy / paste to a new drive.

Thanks, I’ll try the linux recovery thing. Do you need the damaged hd to be spinning freely for this to work? It doesn’t sound like it is, so would data recovery be impossible in this case?
I guess it’s hard to say how much the disk is spinning just by listening – it’s trying but the infernal click has taken over.

Garry_Lager – Member
Thanks, I’ll try the linux recovery thing. Do you need the damaged hd to be spinning freely for this to work? It doesn’t sound like it is, so would data recovery be impossible in this case?
I guess it’s hard to say how much the disk is spinning just by listening – it’s trying but the infernal click has taken over.

Yes, but try the freezer thing. In a sandwich bag in there for a couple of hours.
I don’t know why it works but it does. I guess the components are of such a tight tolerance that the temperature is sometimes enough to make a difference and allow it to spin up for a bit.

Yes the disc needs to be spinning to read data, however it may be the boot section of the disc that’s failing so by booting from another disc you can then read the non-damaged part. It’s worth a try.

PS this shows the merits of having some kind of backup inc having important files / photos on (free) cloud storage (google drive, Dropbox, iCloud)

Good luck