laptop hard drive clicks but no access

breckrider · Joined: Feb 17, 2004 Posts: 103

I've taken the hard drive out of the original laptop and put it in an external case. When I try to access it all I get is a clicking sound. Is there a way to access the data without sending it off to an expensive data recovery company?

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2747

Why did you remove the hd from the laptop?

The clicking you hear is probably the read head. If it was doing this for awhile, you should have grabbed your data before it died.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 2240 Location: Central FL, USA

That's well known as the "Click of Death".
The first time you heard it, you should have tried to salvage your most important data. usually they give you some warning before they go out all together.

That sound is the read head positioner, moving the read/write head to try to locate the data. The data may not be recoverable at all, even by a recovery specialist.

Contact a data recovery company and see what they say about it.

good luck,
The Doctor Cool

goretsky · Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 11:32 pm Post subject:

Hello,

Does the laptop hard disk drive in the external hard disk drive enclosure have enough power to spin up? Some enclosures and combinations require an external power source (either a second USB cable or a separate power transformer) to be connected in order to spin up the hard disk drive in the enclosure.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

breckrider · Joined: Feb 17, 2004 Posts: 103

UGh.....never received a notice that anybody replied. I don't remember what happened when we first heard the clicking sound or why we didn't move the data. I think it was because when it started ticking we never had a chance to move it.

I do have an external enclosure but I get the same ticking sound. I've contacted some data recovery companies and my god, they are expensive. I don't know what I'll do with it. I keep hoping that one day it will just magically work for about 15 minutes so I can recover the data.

Gezzer · Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:15 am Post subject:

use a live linux cd distro
you should be able to access the drive and transfer the data, even a bit at a time, until you have the data removed/saved from the HDD

a live linux CD runs from the CD drive and does not install anything to your system …

breckrider · Joined: Feb 17, 2004 Posts: 103

Where would I get the cd?

zzron357 · Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 65

Hi Breckrider,
I use Puppy linux for this sort of thing.
www.puppylinux.com/ will get you there.
Latest release v.4.31 is good, about 115 Mb.
Download ".iso" and "burn image" to cd.
This is a "live-cd" boot disk, it runs in ram.
If hdd is toast, puppy may not help, but
if anything can be saved, Puppy will do it.
Puppy is easiest to use, and can resize partitions
and other tricks, besides being a really nice
small OS. I run it on several pc's.
Puppy will turn on most dead pc's if M$ is blown.
Great for safe surfing too. Best wishes, zzron57

breckrider · Joined: Feb 17, 2004 Posts: 103

Thanks. I'll try it.

apple1314 · Joined: Jul 14, 2010 Posts: 6

Me too.
Will have a try.