Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor, clicks while "spinning."

Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor,
clicks while "spinning."

What is the most likely culprit in this situation? When I would plug
it in I could hear it spinning with a noticeable "click, click,
click" during each revolution. Now, a few minutes later it has
stopped clicking altogether.

Does it sound like something an adept EET (electronics engineering)
student could handle?

Thanks for all your guesswork!

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.

-Lost wrote:
Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor,
clicks while "spinning."

What is the most likely culprit in this situation? When I would plug
it in I could hear it spinning with a noticeable "click, click,
click" during each revolution. Now, a few minutes later it has
stopped clicking altogether.

Does it sound like something an adept EET (electronics engineering)
student could handle?

Thanks for all your guesswork!

Those clicks are the result of recalibration attempts,
quite reasonable after that fall.
Also the disk might have a lot of bad blocks, due to
surface damage.
As the bad blocks get re-assigned to the spare tracks
reserved for repair, those clicks become less and less.

"-Lost" wrote in message
...
Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor,
clicks while "spinning."

What is the most likely culprit in this situation? When I would plug
it in I could hear it spinning with a noticeable "click, click,
click" during each revolution. Now, a few minutes later it has
stopped clicking altogether.

If the hard disk was dropped on the floor it is more than likely physically
damaged - not an electrical problem. The clicking you hear is obviously
physical parts touching which is a very bad sign! I would put it in the bin
and restore your backups to a new drive!

On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:16:05 -0500, "-Lost"
wrote:

Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor,
clicks while "spinning."

What is the most likely culprit in this situation? When I would plug
it in I could hear it spinning with a noticeable "click, click,
click" during each revolution. Now, a few minutes later it has
stopped clicking altogether.

Does it sound like something an adept EET (electronics engineering)
student could handle?

Thanks for all your guesswork!

Seems like your hard drive had a head crash and needs
replaced.

-Lost wrote:
Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor,
clicks while "spinning."

What is the most likely culprit in this situation? When I would plug
it in I could hear it spinning with a noticeable "click, click,
click" during each revolution. Now, a few minutes later it has
stopped clicking altogether.

Does it sound like something an adept EET (electronics engineering)
student could handle?

Thanks for all your guesswork!


Was the drive powered up when it hit or did it simply fall off the table?
Onto concrete/tile or carpet? Modern drives, most especially notebook
drives, retract and park their heads while powered down and have a
fantastically high resistance to shocks in that state.

A quick back-of-envelope calculation tells me that if your drive was making
a click "during each revolution" it would be making a sound 90 times per
second (assuming a typical 5400RPM notebook drive) or 120 times per second
(assuming a modern 7200RPM drive). Neither of these would be a noticeable
click -- it would be a small-scale roar happening that fast. That leads me
to think that the sound is from the heads seeking which may be perfectly
normal depending on the circumstances. The fact that the clicking stops
suggests the same thing to me.

My advice would be to connect the drive to a disused computer, using an
adapter as necessary, and then to run the maker's diagnostic software on it
for at least a few days. If it survives that with no errors then you are
probably home free. If it dies in the process you will at least know where
you stand.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com

On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:07:51 -0400, John McGaw
wrote:

-Lost wrote:
Please advise most likely problem - IBM Travelstar hit the floor,
clicks while "spinning."

What is the most likely culprit in this situation? When I would plug
it in I could hear it spinning with a noticeable "click, click,
click" during each revolution. Now, a few minutes later it has
stopped clicking altogether.

Does it sound like something an adept EET (electronics engineering)
student could handle?

Thanks for all your guesswork!


Was the drive powered up when it hit or did it simply fall off the table?
Onto concrete/tile or carpet? Modern drives, most especially notebook
drives, retract and park their heads while powered down and have a
fantastically high resistance to shocks in that state.

A quick back-of-envelope calculation tells me that if your drive was making
a click "during each revolution" it would be making a sound 90 times per
second (assuming a typical 5400RPM notebook drive) or 120 times per second
(assuming a modern 7200RPM drive). Neither of these would be a noticeable
click -- it would be a small-scale roar happening that fast. That leads me
to think that the sound is from the heads seeking which may be perfectly
normal depending on the circumstances. The fact that the clicking stops
suggests the same thing to me.

My advice would be to connect the drive to a disused computer, using an
adapter as necessary, and then to run the maker's diagnostic software on it
for at least a few days. If it survives that with no errors then you are
probably home free. If it dies in the process you will at least know where
you stand.

You bring up a good point that I'd overlooked. I had
assumed the drive wasn't operable, was only making clicking
noises trying to find the first sector over and over again.
I'd overlooked that the system might still work fine and the
only symptom is clicking.

Response to John McGaw :

Was the drive powered up when it hit or did it simply fall off
the table? Onto concrete/tile or carpet? Modern drives, most
especially notebook drives, retract and park their heads while
powered down and have a fantastically high resistance to shocks
in that state.

Powered on and it hit the carpet. So, 50/50 worst case I guess.

A quick back-of-envelope calculation tells me that if your drive
was making a click "during each revolution" it would be making a
sound 90 times per second (assuming a typical 5400RPM notebook
drive) or 120 times per second (assuming a modern 7200RPM
drive). Neither of these would be a noticeable click -- it would
be a small-scale roar happening that fast. That leads me to
think that the sound is from the heads seeking which may be
perfectly normal depending on the circumstances. The fact that
the clicking stops suggests the same thing to me.

OK, let me first say that I'm an idiot. I'd say that it makes a
noticeable click 2-3 times per second. Sometimes it does not do it
at all. Currently it's clicking...

....which leads me to Sjouke's response. I've never heard of this
recalibration being so loud. In fact, I'm not entirely sure I've
heard of a self-recalibration mode period. *shrug*

Could it be that I should leave it on and running for a time to see
if Windows will eventually detect the drive?

My advice would be to connect the drive to a disused computer,
using an adapter as necessary, and then to run the maker's
diagnostic software on it for at least a few days. If it
survives that with no errors then you are probably home free. If
it dies in the process you will at least know where you stand.

And this is the route to take although the system cannot "see" the
drive -- at least at the software level I mean?

Thanks for your detailed response!

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.

Response to Sjouke Burry :

Those clicks are the result of recalibration attempts,
quite reasonable after that fall.
Also the disk might have a lot of bad blocks, due to
surface damage.
As the bad blocks get re-assigned to the spare tracks
reserved for repair, those clicks become less and less.

Thanks, Sjouke. In my reply to Jon I touched on what you said here
(I'm always so confused as to how to reply to a thread where I had
numerous responses.)

Any thoughts on leaving it powered on and seeing if it corrects its
own problem? Or did I totally miss the point?

Thanks!

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.

On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:31:35 -0500, "-Lost"
wrote:

Response to John McGaw :

Was the drive powered up when it hit or did it simply fall off
the table? Onto concrete/tile or carpet? Modern drives, most
especially notebook drives, retract and park their heads while
powered down and have a fantastically high resistance to shocks
in that state.

Powered on and it hit the carpet. So, 50/50 worst case I guess.

A quick back-of-envelope calculation tells me that if your drive
was making a click "during each revolution" it would be making a
sound 90 times per second (assuming a typical 5400RPM notebook
drive) or 120 times per second (assuming a modern 7200RPM
drive). Neither of these would be a noticeable click -- it would
be a small-scale roar happening that fast. That leads me to
think that the sound is from the heads seeking which may be
perfectly normal depending on the circumstances. The fact that
the clicking stops suggests the same thing to me.

OK, let me first say that I'm an idiot. I'd say that it makes a
noticeable click 2-3 times per second. Sometimes it does not do it
at all. Currently it's clicking...

...which leads me to Sjouke's response. I've never heard of this
recalibration being so loud. In fact, I'm not entirely sure I've
heard of a self-recalibration mode period. *shrug*

Could it be that I should leave it on and running for a time to see
if Windows will eventually detect the drive?

My advice would be to connect the drive to a disused computer,
using an adapter as necessary, and then to run the maker's
diagnostic software on it for at least a few days. If it
survives that with no errors then you are probably home free. If
it dies in the process you will at least know where you stand.

And this is the route to take although the system cannot "see" the
drive -- at least at the software level I mean?

Thanks for your detailed response!

Boot the system to the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics
program, either with it in the laptop or pull it and put it
in another laptop, or a desktop via an inexpensive adapter
(a web search will find such adapters if you have none).

Response to kony :

Boot the system to the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics
program, either with it in the laptop or pull it and put it
in another laptop, or a desktop via an inexpensive adapter
(a web search will find such adapters if you have none).

"...Or a desktop via an inexpensive adapter..."

How about a laptop with an inexpensive adapter? That is actually
how/when/where it was dropped.

I pulled the OLD HDD from the laptop and put it in one of those USB
external cases. Could I leave it in there and run the diagnostics
as suggested?

Or is a desktop computer somehow more competent in this regard?

Thanks!

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.