[LE] Just lost everything

[Elias555]

 

 

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The clicking is a pretty common failure. It's the drive failing to get a servo lock because it cannot read the data from the platter. The cause of the read failure can vary though. In any case it's a mechanical problem and no amount of software will be able to retrieve it without hardware modifications.

 

If you have no plans to attempt recovery through a 3rd party, then a last ditch effort is to hope maybe it's a slight alignment issue. If you have the skills to take it out of the pc, do so. Place it in the freezer for 24 hours. I know sounds dumb but sometimes it works. Then remote it to try again. Place it on a paper tower if you can arrange to plug it in without mounting it. If not then don't worry about it. If it doesn't work the first time don't bother repeating as it is unlikely to work even after more attempts. However if it does work and you get some data but the problem comes back, feel free to repeat it. However make sure the drive has cooled down to room temperature before placing back in the freezer. You want to avoid condensation as much as possible.

 

As for the external drive options. The WD Passport drives work pretty good. The small drives like that which are the "portable" externals as I call them, tend to have a higher and quicker failure rate in my experience. The passport is by definition an external hard drive. It's easier to differentiate the types as saying laptop external, or desktop external to signify the size and style of device. In any case I wouldn't put too much thought into it other than finding a reasonably priced drive as I said before, they all will fail. It's just a matter of is it your only copy when it fails. Don't be like some of my naive customers and think putting the data only on the external drive is a backup. A backup is an additional copy besides the original. So the original presumably staying in the pc main hard drive, then the second copy on the external is a valid "backup". But you can always go paranoid like myself with 5+ copies of everything.

 

Edit: Uhh...I just reread that and saw the part you said about opening it up. You opened up the hard drive cover to expose the platters and arm inside? That's a fairly good way to damage the drive. You could still try the freezer trick but if that doesn't work it's pretty likely gone without someone like DriveSavers.

 

What do you mean with that last part? Are the platters light sensitive or something?

 

 

My worse failures were from a western digital and a seagate, the latter I found.. shocking, and that one failed on the second day. The WD was catastrophic as it was the OS drive, and it was a mechanical failure, it would have cost 500USD and I didn't think it was worth the cost and just let it go. It so far has been the only HDD that gave warnings of imminent failure, with the first sign being the load clicking.

 

Had an external fail, and that was the drive itself, it booted up for one last hurrah and allowed me to backup as much as I could before it wouldn't boot up anymore.

 

Now I'm remembering all my crazy PC experiences. Heh, the weirdest one being a motherboard I ordered, arrive to my house, dead. MSI support didn't believe me though lol but they had to take it back anyway to confirm. Dead mobo is dead man, power going to it, by it ain't gonna do much else. Don't get me started on a HP PC catching on fire on day 2 of purchase.

My first one is samsung and it's lasted around 8 years thus far, the other 2 seagate(the failed one) and WD. I haven't had any problems with WD but I still need to buy another internal hdd.

At least that failed hdd let you boot it once more. I hope the methods I've been reading will let me do that. I just need to get the important stuff, shouldn't be more than 200gb.

Wow, that's unlucky! I haven't had anything like that happen, thankfully.

[JonathanOstrus]

 

 

What do you mean with that last part? Are the platters light sensitive or something?

 

No, but the parts are extremely sensitive to dust and such. This may help to understand the issue https://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/2014/11/10/microscopic-particles-can-cause-huge-damage/

[NexusComa]

#1 rule of programming ... Make backups stored in a different place.

Sorry to hear about your loss ... It's a hard lesson hopefully you only have to learn once.

I myself create a small program that with copy my mod to my storage archive drive.

I can't tell you how many times I've found errors that forced me to jump back 2-3 versions

of a mod I was creating. It also gives you a bit of freedom to experiment knowing you have backups.

 

Good luck, I feel your pain ...