Suddenly, my 1TB external hard disk started to "tick tick" and disappeared from resources... never touched, dropped, shacked, nothing... but it's dead... obviously is not the cable - but I tested it nevertheless... it can't be the interface, but I'm ready to open it and connect it directly to the PC...

Last resources? Freezing trick? Something else? I'm desperate... the first dead disk, in what? twenty years? and it's not the most used - at the contrary, the less used of all...

Click click click...

I've been thinking to cry, to throw the drive out of the window, to kick myself in the back (if possible) to have not made the important backups...

Click click click...

No, I should counteract! But how? Freezer trick? No, risky, it wouldn't work probably...

Click click click...

Spin the drive, so the head *may* turn back to its place? Done. Nothing. Hit gently the drive, for the same reason? Done. Nothing.

Click click click...

Open the drive and gently put actual head to its place? Risky, but... let's do it... outer box open, time to unscrew the... hey, but there are no screws...

WTF, let's try it for the last time, before dump this... hey, it's working now! Why?!?

Long story short: worst three hours of the last months... moral: MAKE BACKUPS! At least of the most important thing, movies could be replaced, your pictures, works, memories not...

If it's working, copy all the data across, and then send the drive back to the manufacturer for a replacement.

Hard drives die, there's nothing you can do to fix them.

(2017-06-15, 02:55 PM)Feallan Wrote: Hard drives die, there's nothing you can do to fix them.

Yes there is, you can send it to a data recovery company and they will open the drive in a dust and static free environment, replace the heads using a donor drive or the spindle motor or whatever is wrong, put it back together and copy the data off it. It actually doesn't take much time to do either. But I would not suggest attempting it yourself if the data is valuable to you.

I meant that he himself can't fix them. A specialized service can, at least sometimes, but it's expensive, especially when the damage is mechanical, and there is no guarantee that portions of the data didn't get corrupted in the process. The lesson really is "make backups", because hard drives are very prone to failure and can die when you least expect that. The funny thing is, there are no rules, I've seen less than a year old drives crap out, while I still have three 12 year olds that actually work and never got a single bad sector.