Drive clack clack thanks,
Thanks FP, I was kinda joking in the other topic about where's the hardware section. I want to ask why does my drive goes clack... clack... clack... But thanks for setting it up. Hopefully this will be like a trip to a tourist town like Branson, MO. lots of fun for the short time we stay, but nice to get back home again soon! Well on topic. The other post I said about the drive doing 390 MB in a few seconds, stuck for awhile getting past about 4MB, then flying past 2.500MB in about a minute, then it's been stuck at 3,059 for 30-45 mintues. Well I just looked, and though that's been awhile since I posted the above, I am still sitting on 3,059MB running spinrite! This must be over an hour at least now since it got stuck on that number and not advanced. I'll let it run all night and probably all day if needed, I don't need the system for anything for awhile anyway. Dang, everything was running so perfect till tonight on that system too. I was about to rip into the daughters system til they broke mine! Her system she said the fans start and run for a few seconds then shut off, the system never really tries to boot up. She hasn't used it for a month or more I guess. She has been busy with school stuff and seldom home but to sleep, and half the time she actaully living with our friends much closer to her school anyways.

I've seen really bad drives run for days. The problem is that a clack usually indicates that you have a problem with the head armature, something spinrite can't fix.

Your probably right, and spinrite is still stuck at 3,059MB. I hope all is not lost, but it may be :( It's still showing it's proccesing bits in the buffer so it's not locked up I guess, but dang it hasn't moved from 3,059MB for like an hour or more I guess, at least! Going to bed now, look at it tomorrow when I get up, hope it gets to at least 30,065MB by then LOL

It's having a hard time reading each sector. Spinrite tries to read each one 2000 times (using slightly variations in angles in order to try to read the data). With a timeout of a few seconds for each read attempt that's a long time to read one bad sector. Usually you just have a few bad sectors and it breezes through the rest of the drive, but with a bad armature it's going to do this for each one. It may eventually read each one, but they'll still be slow to access.

Yep, it's gonna take awhile. I let it run all night and still running, still shows 3,059MB as what's been scanned, still shows the running time as 1hr 3minutes , and time left still shows 54 hours 34minutes. Does not seem to update the times unless updating the megs read or Icons or something. Dynastat recovery screen shows it's reading bits still but nothing been updated since last night on other screens. Says it's now reading bits on Cylinder 372 Sector 15 Head 243 Info for this drive shows Cylinders 1024 Sectors 63 Heads 255 I'll try to get another drive this week to back this one up to if I can read it, then RMA this one, I think waruntee is good till like 2010? If spinrite can fix it for now, I won't use it again till I am backing it up.

ANother question on fixing the drive FP. I can stop the spinrite scan anytime, then restart and specify a percent of drive to start at. Last screen update shows 1.02% is where I am at now. If I stopped then started at say 5% or 10% to skip over this part of the drive would that work to see how the rest of the drive is, and without doing any damage? I don't know how the drive is read so I don't know if it would skip over the bad area in one spot like I am thinking.

Yes you can do that. Frankly I think it's a lost cause so stop it and skip ahead 10% at a time and if it continues doing the same thing that will confirm it's the head actuator and not the platter, and there's no point going on.

Ok. After running all the time since last post, it got to sector 17. I stopped it and started again fresh, it got to 398MB fast then stopped again having problems, that's what it did last night when first started scanning. Got around 390MB and hung there for awhile. I'll try skipping ahead now and see what happens. Ok I started at 10% which showed to be about 30,000MB where it started. In about 11 minutes it advanced about about 8% or 26,000MB. It is now stuck analyzing again and moving slowly, about 4MB in last 3 minutes. It just kicked in and running full speed again for now at about 19.5%. I guess I am going to buy this drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148261 I looked at various seagates and was surprised at some of the bad reviews on the larger drives and ones with 16MB cache. Reviews are good on this one, only 14 posted though.

Forum shows last post was about 2:54am and I said drive scan was up to 19.5% then After letting spintrit run all night and today it's at 21% now, about 12hrs to do 1.5% :( The first run it was showing Cylinder 372 Sector 15 Head 243 Where it was fighting and not progressing ahead. Now after restarted at 10% it made it to 21% Cylinder 7691 Sector 44 Head 284 where it seems to be stuck now. I guess I will shut it down for now soon, buy a new drive and when it gets here see if I can save any data from this one then RMA it. Is there any of the tricks that might get this working to make backup once that won't void an RMA. Freeze it, bake it, beat it with a soft rubber hammer?? Maybe shake it around or some odd vodoo chant?? Strange, the drive seemed to be working perfect last time I used it, put maybe 20-40 gigs on it, was playing the music files just fine. Then next day wife was transfering MP3s over the network and kid burning a CD at same time when it started that clack clack clack. It's quite now though, no clacking, I don't think it ever clacked but that one time. After it was shut down then later rebooted it's been quite, but windows wasn't finding folders like it should, taking forever to read the root, and not opening folders, just the flashlight searching Icon. I wonder if I-Recover will read most the files or hang if I try to use it to back up what data I can. What's the best deals on a reliable large drive now, I posted the 250gig link I am thinking about at Newegg, I think it was $70. I don't want to spend more than $100 if I don't have to, and hate to spend that much.

OK. after the final spinrite -*test*-('") I had tried I shut down the system and figured I might just try to read the drive with DIY I-recover and just see if it could find the files. NO! All this time after the first clack clack it did that once it has ran near silent, even when spinrite was -*test*-('")ing it. So I just start the system up and I get Clack... Clack.... Clack...., everytime and I tried a bunch! And you probably guessed it, when drive does clack clack like this it is not detected at bootup by the system so Sata is not installed. This is in an external case, I find that now it goes clacking if I just turn on the drive, even with the system off. Just on the odd chance it might have to do with anything I stuck it in the system as an internal and same thing like. I did not figure it would matter but what the heck, might as well try anything before RMA.