Member Avatar for joshuu

There is this HDD that was working fine and one time it frooze and shut itself off and upon restarting it showed that there is no fixed disk present. I did start the computer with a start up disk and then the startup disk showed that there is no fixed disk present.I check the status with the fdisk and shows that there is no fixed disk.Iam very confused cos this has never happened to me any other time.I want to partition it but Iam not sure if its going to be fine.One more thing is that it was 20 GB with only one partation i.e C and the last one day before all this happened it started to freeze and hang for about 5 or so minutes and then it 'clicks' and you could hear it running and all goes well for some minutes b4 it happens again.I dont know if after partationing again it would be fine or this is the end of this harddisk.Any suggestions?

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Short expert summary tied to the thread: the symptoms describes — system freezing, an audible rhythmic “click,” then the drive disappearing so BIOS/fdisk report “no fixed disk” — are classic signs of mechanical or firmware failure inside the drive rather than a simple partition-table problem. Repartitioning or reformatting will not cure a failing actuator, stuck heads, or corrupted service-area firmware, and attempting writes can make recovery harder. (seagate.com)

Immediate, non‑invasive steps (do these first and stop if the drive shows serious distress):

  • Power it off and do not keep power‑cycling it; each spinup risks more damage.
  • Try only basic checks: swap the data and power cable, try a different port or another PC, or connect the drive in a powered USB/SATA adapter to see if it becomes consistently visible. Do not open the enclosure.
  • If the drive ever becomes readable long enough, do not run repairs in place: create a sector‑level image of the failing disk and work from that image. For fragile drives use an imaging tool designed to minimize head movement and resume safely (e.g., GNU ddrescue) and then attempt partition‑table/file recovery against the image (tools such as TestDisk operate on images). (ontrack.com)

If the data is important, stop experimenting and contact a professional lab. Recovery from clicking / “no‑detect” drives often requires cleanroom work (head swaps, firmware fixes) and opening the drive at home or repeatedly powering it on commonly destroys recoverability. Labs will evaluate the device and quote options; prices vary by complexity, so get a free evaluation before committing. If the data is not valuable, replace the drive and treat this as a hard lesson to keep a current backup. (ontrack.com)

(Noting prior replies: and correctly warned that clicking + BIOS disappearance is bad; is right that partition‑table tools only help when the disk can be read — imaging first is the safe workflow.)

Recommended Answers

All 8 Replies

Member Avatar for Catweazle

I would not trust the drive again. Hearing clicking sounds from it, then having the drive disappear is a pretty sure sign of problems, I'fd think. Does BIOS detect the drive?

Even if BIOS is having periodic problems detecting it, I'd replace the thing.

Member Avatar for joshuu

Infact even the bios doesn't see it

Member Avatar for Catweazle

It most likely has turned into a paperweight then, I'm afraid.

Member Avatar for alc6379

Eww... clicking?

Try a forum search about putting your hard drive in a freezer. DMR and someone else posted some stuff about this, and some have reported success in temporarily resurrecting "dead" drives.

Heck, since the drive's dead, it wouldn't hurt to at least try.

Member Avatar for ikenfixit

You can recover some w/spinrite if it will still spin up. This is generally a one time deal. Get your data and a new drive.

Member Avatar for ikenfixit

Also.. The freezer trick does work on occasion! But same thing.. Get the data and trash it..

Member Avatar for Puckdropper

Just a FYI... (Clicking drives are bad things!)

If you just lost the partition table, there's a program called MBRWork that may be able to restore it for you.

There's also a Linux utility called "gpart" that can detect and restore your partitions. I couldn't get MBRWork to work, but Gpart did. I shut my computer off before it had written the data in the hard disk cache and lost the partition table.

Member Avatar for oalee

click, click, click, click... if you ever get it to work, salvage what you can and get rid of that HDD. It's gonna be next to useless after a while...

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