-.- Dead Hard drive?

[skwerly]

My hard drive has been running very loudly for a couple months now. Today it started making a very different noise, and stopped being readable by the BIOS. I think. I can't be sure since I have no idea how to figure out if it is being read or not other than the lack of Automated System Restore functionality. The hard drive access light stays on permanently, and there's a really weird repetitive noise coming from the rough area of the drive.


I bought my T30 on ebay 2 months after the warranty ran out. The purchase was 4 months ago. I won't be able to get a new one before Thursday.

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to Forum.ThinkPads.
To give you the bad news: from your description, you can kiss your hard disk good-bye.
Alarm bells should have started ringing when you first heard strange noises.
If there is any important data on that disk, it will take quite an (very expensive possibly) effort, to get it off. If the data is not life-threatening, leave it there.

Whatever else you do, DON'T run that HD anymore! Take it out of the laptop.

When you buy a replacement, get one that runs at 5400rpm, or better even 7200rpm.
Personally I like Seagate Momentus drives, but folks here also are very enamored with the Hitachi 7K100, a 100GB HD at 7200rpm.

PS: to facilitate future questions, it's a good idea to add your laptop info to your signature (as shown e.g. in mine).

[nikki605]

Several years ago, the HDD in my T21 began making a frequent clicking sound and was reporting seek/read errors. I knew it was on its way out. I immediately shut off the T21 and stopped using it. I got my USB external backup drive hooked up and my Acronis True Image software loaded and powered up the T21 one last time to get a disk image to my backup drive. I was lucky - it worked. Depending on the failure, many times its already too late.

Then I set about selecting a new HDD. When I got a new one installed (Hitachi, 7K100, 80GB, 7200RPM) is was easy to copy the disk image from the external drive to the new internal drive. I was back up and running in short order.

I've faithfully backed up my entire disk, frequently, ever since.

[danage]

this presentation is a very good point to start. you might be able to mount the drive ONE MORE TIME after you put it in a freezer.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 08A0824295

[ludox]

The 10Go that is on my T21 is the original one.

It runs good.

But when I take it in hand and return, there is a clic.

One piece seem move in and this don't seem normal way but the hd turn and I will change it for a momentus 5400.

Seeem silent, not consume power and fast enough with 8Mo cache memory.

I think obtain visible better performance.