Seagate 1.5 TB is either dead or dying!

[N.E.A]

Hey guys, 

 

Its not the first time that I wake up and find my PC giving me the blue screen of death this happened several times before and when I restart everything is just fine. Today however, one of my HDs has a problem. It produces a clicking sound which I guess the needle is either scratching the platters or it is just stuck in its place. In any case, I want to know three things: 

 

1. Why did this happen? is it because I keep my PC turned on for extended periods of time? 

 

2. Is there a way to repair it and / or the data stays intact? 

 

3. If it is dead, is there a specific types of HDs that are less prune to this problem that I can buy and when I do should I shut down my computer regularly or it does not matter?

 

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

Edit: Also I am considering Raid 1 option since what I've lost would talk too long to recover(most of them are movies anime ..etc among programs and other stuff), so what are the recommendation for raid 1?

Edited April 7, 2015 by N.E.A

[Braegnok]

I think heat is the main killer of drives,.. leaving your rig on 24/7 is fine,.. provided you have air flow across drive bays.

 

You can try cloning your failing drive or retrieving files with data recovery software,.. I have good luck using EasUS Partition Master Free Edition on bad failing drives.

 

Using RAID-1 (Mirroring) with two drives is easy to rebuild and cost- effective, high fault tolerance for home/personal computer,.. and for reliable drives any name brand will work fine,.. WD, Seagate, Samsung, etc.

 

Good Luck with your data recovery.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Braegnok

[N.E.A]

I think heat is the main killer of drives,.. leaving your rig on 24/7 is fine,.. provided you have air flow across drive bays,.. I try to keep mine below 60c.

 

You can try cloning your failing drive with data recovery software,.. I have good luck using EasUS Partition Master Free Edition on bad failing drives.

 

Using RAID-1 (Mirroring) is cost- effective, high fault tolerance for personal computer with two disk drives,.. and for drives any name brand will work fine WD Black, Seagate, Samsung, etc.

 

Good Luck with your data recovery.

 

Thanks very much for your reply. 

 

Any ideas on how to get Easus to work with the HD? shall I just connect it even though it is not showing in "My Computer" or is there a more sophisticated way of doing it??

[IVIYTH0S]

Is the drive showing up in the bios?

[Waco]

If the drive isn't showing up in Windows recovery chances are slim.

 

It really pains me that Windows still doesn't monitor and report SMART data from disks...

[SpikeSoprano]

I do believe the op had plenty of warnings, the pc was blue screening for a while before the drive finally died totally, after the second bs I would have ran some hd tests and gotten the data off of it. Sorry for your luck op.

[N.E.A]

Is the drive showing up in the bios?

No it does not !! 

 

If the drive isn't showing up in Windows recovery chances are slim.

 

It really pains me that Windows still doesn't monitor and report SMART data from disks...

I'm afraid it does not show up any where since the clicking noise stops after a while and it looks like it turns itself off or something like that.  What do you mean by SMART data? 

 

 

I do believe the op had plenty of warnings, the pc was blue screening for a while before the drive finally died totally, after the second bs I would have ran some hd tests and gotten the data off of it. Sorry for your luck op.

 

Well at that time I had no idea what is causing the issue. I used to run some programs in the background, maybe one of them caused the previous BSOD I tried to trace the issue more than once but it never hinted that its from the HD. 

 

 

[IVIYTH0S]

How long have you had that drive? That was a bad generation of Seagate drives, and if you never upgraded the firmware they're pretty sure to fail on you (it happened to my 1TB 7200.11 drive because I didn't upgrade the firmware)

 

If you're feeling lucky you could always try tracking down another 7200.11 1.5TB drive and swapping components just to get your data off but otherwise you might have to kiss it goodbye

 

As for what S.M.A.R.T. is:

 

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)^[1] that detects and reports on various indicators of drive reliability, with the intent of enabling the anticipation of hardware failures.

When S.M.A.R.T. data indicates a possible imminent drive failure, software running on the host system may notify the user so stored data can be copied to another storage device, preventing data loss, and the failing drive can be replaced. The drive manufacturer may be able to use recorded S.M.A.R.T. data to discover where the faults lie and prevent them from recurring in future drive designs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

[N.E.A]

How long have you had that drive? That was a bad generation of Seagate drives, and if you never upgraded the firmware they're pretty sure to fail on you (it happened to my 1TB 7200.11 drive because I didn't upgrade the firmware)

 

If you're feeling lucky you could always try tracking down another 7200.11 1.5TB drive and swapping components just to get your data off but otherwise you might have to kiss it goodbye

 

As for what S.M.A.R.T. is:

 

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)^[1] that detects and reports on various indicators of drive reliability, with the intent of enabling the anticipation of hardware failures.

When S.M.A.R.T. data indicates a possible imminent drive failure, software running on the host system may notify the user so stored data can be copied to another storage device, preventing data loss, and the failing drive can be replaced. The drive manufacturer may be able to use recorded S.M.A.R.T. data to discover where the faults lie and prevent them from recurring in future drive designs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

 

 

 

Thanks for the clarification buddy. 

 

On that matter, what are the OSs that support SMART? 

 

Also on the matter of getting a new HD, which do you think is more reliable, a hybrid HD ( SSD+HD) or normal HD ? ? 

 

I thought instead of getting two HDs and using raid 1, I'd get instead a 1 TB SSD. The one I found locally is 960 GBs and its super expensive compared to the dual HD setup.

 

 

Also there is the Western Digital Purple which according to them is "WD Purple Surveillance Storage is built for 24/7, always-on,..." 

do you think that it is worth it for my kind of usage? I know that it can be overkill since it was built for surveillance but I can go for it if it will offer better reliability. 

Edited April 7, 2015 by N.E.A

[IVIYTH0S]

No problem

 

All modern OSs will support it but you will need software (often times the intel/amd SATA software/drivers provided from your motherboard manufacturer) that will give you updates on any major hardware error reports.

 

For storage a normal harddrive is plenty, the hybrid harddrive is really not as necessary these days unless it's your only drive in a laptop and you can't afford an SSD in a size that's good enough for your usage. 240-256GB SSD and big/cheap storage HDD is the best combo for a desktop though.

 

Whatever floats your boat, if you can afford the 960GB/1TB SSD then by all means go for it, though it'd be very much a waste if it's only for storage, but if it's for your OS and storage then it's a decent investment. (Though I'd sooner upgrade your GPU prior to that!)

[GabrielT]

Personally I like WD Green HDD's if speed isn't your main concern, they seem to be very reliable in my experience.

[N.E.A]

No problem

 

All modern OSs will support it but you will need software (often times the intel/amd SATA software/drivers provided from your motherboard manufacturer) that will give you updates on any major hardware error reports.

 

For storage a normal harddrive is plenty, the hybrid harddrive is really not as necessary these days unless it's your only drive in a laptop and you can't afford an SSD in a size that's good enough for your usage. 240-256GB SSD and big/cheap storage HDD is the best combo for a desktop though.

 

Whatever floats your boat, if you can afford the 960GB/1TB SSD then by all means go for it, though it'd be very much a waste if it's only for storage, but if it's for your OS and storage then it's a decent investment. (Though I'd sooner upgrade your GPU prior to that!)

Well at least for now i will be getting a normal HD then maybe two and setup raid 1. And maybe I'll add a bigger SSD with that. As for the gpu,you're totally correct. I haven't played games on my pc for around 1 or 2 years (demanding gsmes that is) and I slowly going back to gaming. I will consider a GTX 960 Ti when it comes out.

To be honest after I upgrade the Gpu, I very much like to upgrade the whole thing if I deem it worthy.

Hopefully Windows 10 will support SMART to help avoid such incidents.