Hi guys, I'm fairly sure I know the verdict, but I really could do with trying some fixes. So here's the story: Recently got a new build, running on a MSI H87-G43 board, it was being a little unstable, just having issues loading windows and sometimes rebooting, so I figured to update the BIOS. So I have 2 HDDs, 1 intel 335 SSD, and a samsung spinpoint F1 or F3, I can't remember. Updated the BIOS, and on reboot the spinpoint made clicking sounds, then a mighty grinding noise. Following that, nothing detects the spinpoint hard disk. Nothing in BIOS, nothing in windows device manager, etc. I downgraded the BIOS back to what it should be, but still nothing. Also tried different SATA ports on the mobo. I'm assuming the drive is going to be screwed, but I could really do with trying to recover what's left on there before I get a new drive. Practically everything off my old build was saved to that drive temporarily, and there's a lot of important stuff on it. I want to try everything before I end up having to shell out £200+ for data recovery :S
On further inspection, I've taken the drive out, and booted. Boot takes considerably longer, and I can hear the hard drive making a faint buzzing noise a few times before it boots up. Like the sound of a very small motor or something. There's life in it, but something isn't happy.
One thing I would check is that your BIOS update has not reverted the Hard Drive type back to IDE instead of AHCI. I've had this before when flashing my BIOS and assumed that the update had blocked my PC from booting. It was only when half-way through re-installing Windows that I realised what I had done.
Tried both IDE and AHCI. ACHI works fine, IDE results in blue screen, so I assumed that it isn't the problem. Just trying to find some sort of USB bootable recovery tool. I've inspected the PCB and it looks fine, I'm thinking I'm going to have to open it up soonish :S
Ok, an update for anybody who ever has this problem. HDD is not dead, for some reason the platter was jammed, I forced it to spin again and now it spins up on boot, but does the clicking sound where the head is hitting the side because it can't find where it is on the HDD or whatever. Just need to have a google round to try and sort it -.-
I would suggest that you buy another drive and back it up as soon as possible if you get it to work properly, so you don't have a complete failure later on. That's if you can get it to read the disc again.
they don't stick for no reason, if it stuck once it will stick again, also the clicking heads thing means the heads are reaching the max swing angle at full pelt, which is never a good thing. buy another drive as has been suggested and back up everything you want to keep.
Needed to clarify, it still didn't work, but managed to get it spinning as a posed to just being dead with little sound. I know what the clicking was, its because it can't find where it is on the platters and is physically hitting the stopper. So its either broken head(s) or PCB failure. Either way, I don't really have the tools to fix it at the moment. Regardless of whether the data is still ok on the disk or not. I bought a new drive and will just have to carry on. Will have to remember to start backing stuff up more often