One of my older PATA hard drives went faulty the other day. It began to make a 'tick-tick tick-tick'' sound and could not be read by the computer. I remembered the old trick of putting it in the freezer for an hour or so and this enabled the most essential of the files to be read before it started ticking again.
When this occurs, what is actually going on? Is it the arm failing to locate data and returning to its rest position? I realise that the hard drive is a write-off, but I'm just curious as to what has actually gone wrong.
Ray
Paul Brown, an IT expert at Kingswood before I retired, described it as the 'death-watch beetle sound'. I think it has to be the drive trying to get the head into near-contact with the oxide layer. It's normally sprung away from the surface, but is slid in against a cam-like surface until it literally flies over the surface (or, more accurately, the magnetic surface flies beneath it) and is held away by air pressure. If the control system pushes the head to the disc but doesn't get 'contact', then it tries again, and again ...
I think that's the ticking. Incidentally, I took apart a 25GB IBM drive a couple of years ago, after it had failed (not before I'd rescued the entire contents), so I could, potentially, show pictures of the mechanism (if I can be bothered).
great source of powerful magnets.
the tick tick tick is the head allignment failing .......... similar to zip drive click of death.
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/19/tick-tick-tick-significant-number-of-seagate-hard-drives-fail/
Yep, that confirms my diagnosis.
Thanks, chaps
Ray
Click of Death..... I like that.
Better than the metallic Cccchhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiing on start up of a drive in its death throes...
Mine did this and I videoed it and sent it to western digital... They actually responded mine started as a click click then turned into click-grind...
I did however get all the data of it. I had two do this too.