HDD not recognised (click of death)

[fooffygutss]

Hi all,

I've searched the forums prior to making an account and asking for help. I am at a loss here but simply trying before I send this drive to Seagate under warranty.
Disk in question: Seagate IronWolf NAS 10TB (>1 year old) ST10000VN0008 STL008 DOM 09JAN2021 (In case anyone searches with the same issue/device)

I am using an external SATA USB dock, I've tried two different docks but the drive won't recognise in windows or SpinRite yet. I'm still troubleshooting this because in my case; my drive has the click of death and I'm not sure if SpinRite can help me yet but I'd rather try before sending this drive back to seagate!
* SpinRite is running from a Ventoy-bootable USB file. In legacy mode
* This is the clicking sound my drive is making (before I removed it from my tower): https://filebin.net/zibmedi89okhq6ae
* Prior symptoms were, my computer (win1064) grinded to a halt yesterday; my attempts to restore functionality failed and I managed to select to shutdown the PC but after 3 hours it was still stuck on shutting down. So I hard-shut down with the power button and now the drive will not read.

I wondered if anyone had any advice for me? My next steps are going to be:
* to boot in linux and see if I get any response from the drive in there
* To insert the HDD back into my tower directly via sata; isolate the other drives/unplug and try read the disk that way using SpinRite on USB boot

Thank you all for your time

 

[PHolder]

external SATA USB dock

It's NOT recommended to use USB with SpinRite 6.x. SpinRite 6.x does not support USB with native drivers, and so the best you can hope for is reasonable support from the BIOS, which in some cases can be a lot to ask. (Older motherboards have weird limits or corruption issues. New motherboards may only recognize a drive at boot, or if connected to certain ports, etc.)

Try attaching the drive before powering on the PC, and see if you can see the drive inside of the BIOS drive list. If you can't see it there, you probably won't see it inside SpinRite.

 

[fooffygutss]

It's NOT recommended to use USB with SpinRite 6.x. SpinRite 6.x does not support USB with native drivers, and so the best you can hope for is reasonable support from the BIOS, which in some cases can be a lot to ask. (Older motherboards have weird limits or corruption issues. New motherboards may only recognize a drive at boot, or if connected to certain ports, etc.)

Try attaching the drive before powering on the PC, and see if you can see the drive inside of the BIOS drive list. If you can't see it there, you probably won't see it inside SpinRite.

Thank you PHolder! I had made a new post that is yet to be approved so forgive my double up.
Glad you could clarify, as I did suspect a USB dock wasn't the best option here.

 

[Steve]

The "Click of Death" for a hard drive is almost surely terminal. It is the sound of the drive attempting to initialize itself and come online. But it's unable to do so. In the old days this was called a "recalibrate" when the drive lost track of the location of it's heads. So it would pull back to track 0 and try again. Things have changed with track servo information, but the sound is the same.

This is not a SpinRite-fixable problem. Ultimately, this is only a manufacturer-fixable problem.

If your goal is to recover data from the drive you should be prepared to copy it from the drive the next time you're able to get the drive online. So have another drive ready to receive that drive's contents.

The only trick that has worked in the past and can still work, is to refrigerate the drive for a few hours. Place it into a zip-lock bag to prevent condensation and place it into the refrigerator. Wait for it to cool down. Then remove it and immediately — while still cold — attach it to a machine and power it up. If you're lucky and it does come up without clicking, immediately copy the most important files from it.

Generally, once a drive comes online it will remain online, though something appears to have knocked your drive offline yesterday.

 

[fooffygutss]

The "Click of Death" for a hard drive is almost surely terminal. It is the sound of the drive attempting to initialize itself and come online. But it's unable to do so. In the old days this was called a "recalibrate" when the drive lost track of the location of it's heads. So it would pull back to track 0 and try again. Things have changed with track servo information, but the sound is the same.

This is not a SpinRite-fixable problem. Ultimately, this is only a manufacturer-fixable problem.

If your goal is to recover data from the drive you should be prepared to copy it from the drive the next time you're able to get the drive online. So have another drive ready to receive that drive's contents.

The only trick that has worked in the past and can still work, is to refrigerate the drive for a few hours. Place it into a zip-lock bag to prevent condensation and place it into the refrigerator. Wait for it to cool down. Then remove it and immediately — while still cold — attach it to a machine and power it up. If you're lucky and it does come up without clicking, immediately copy the most important files from it.

Generally, once a drive comes online it will remain online, though something appears to have knocked your drive offline yesterday.

Gday Steve,

Firstly, apologies for my delay in replying! A bit on at the moment on my end!!
Secondly thank you, I really appreciate your reply and advice here as well as the very thorough explanation of which I love learning from!

I was grateful to try your ideas but ultimately you're completely correct and sadly the refridgerator didn't save the day. So despite my attempts, I have now sent the HDD off to Seagate's Warranty service centre located in the Netherlands. I am looking forward to their feedback but not holding any hopes of them actually recovering data from it. Seagate offerred a free data recovery service as part of the warranty on these larger drives. Worth a try!

Thanks again Steve and PHolder for your feedback and suggestions.

Cheers

 

[ShadowMeow]

sadly the refridgerator didn't save the day

Because it doesn't work. Failed heads must be replaced on seagate drives, only way to fix it.

 

[Steve]

So despite my attempts, I have now sent the HDD off to Seagate's Warranty service centre located in the Netherlands. I am looking forward to their feedback but not holding any hopes of them actually recovering data from it.

Let us know (here) what finally happens. That will be interesting.

Because it doesn't work. Failed heads must be replaced on seagate drives, only way to fix it.

I just wanted to mention that you seem to be somewhat obsessed with the idea of head replacement — it's what you mention every time any problem arises. But hard drives are insanely complex devices. The technology that's in there is truly astonishing. And there are a great many things that all need to be working perfectly for something that complex to succeed. So, do the heads need to be functioning? Yes, of course... but so, too, do a great many other components. For example, if the head tower positioner bearings become “wobbly” — game over. Or if the positioning bearings develop too much friction — again, game over. Or if the values of any of the critical components in the heads' read-channel amplifiers go out-of-spec — game over. And on and on.

Anyway, I just wanted to observe that while, yes, having healthy heads is necessary, a drive might have perfectly healthy heads while still having any of a (great) number of other problems that cause it to fail. (And, wow!... it's truly astonishing that they are as reliable as they are!)

 

[ShadowMeow]

It's only game over for the end user. Those folks in the data recovery business know how to rebuild hard drives using compatible spare parts from donor drives to get the drive working again. With the exception of the platters because that's where the data is stored. So is it really game over?

While it's true that a head replacement doesn't fix ALL problems, it can fix some common problems.

 

[Steve]

happens to be one of the most common operations in the clean room.

Of course... because that can only be done in a clean room.