Help, Hard Drive Failure I Think, what Do I DO?

Yesterday I was playing a game, and then suddenly my dv6500T started freezing.. and then it went into a complete freeze state where i could only move the mouse. I Pressed and held the Power button to shut it off, but when I Turned it back on.. nothing was happening, it stayed on the first welcome/intro black screen. I then noticed sounds of repeated CLICKING coming from the hard drive.. so im guessing it died..and I never got to back it up

there's things I need, is there anyway to recover them?

If I buy a new hard drive do I have to buy Windows Vista to install an OS on it?

I'm also still under warranty but not sure if I wanna turn it in to HP, i might lose some of data I'm gonna be needing. What should I dO?

 

Does the BIOS Have a HDD test option?
Try it.

Make sure your HD's a seated corectly.

If the data stored on your HD's are mission critical. There are Data Recovery Services out their. But these people charge very high prices to recover data from your smashed up or damaged Hard Drives.
Google Damaged Hard Drive recovery services.

 

If the HDD is clicking there isn't a good chance that you will retrieve data off of your HDD by normal means. If you were to send the HDD to a recovery place you would be spending about $1,000 ro recover all the data, if the data is recoverable. The biggest problem when you hear clicking is the heads (write and read data from the platters) are possibly scratching the platters (round disks inside the HDD case that stores the data magnetically).

You could try purchasing a external HDD bay for a 2.5" Sata HDD, connect your HDD inside, and hook it up to another machine. The problem with this, is that the more it clicks, the more of a chance the data is being destroyed. If this method doesn't work you can either accept that your data is gone and return it to HP for a new HDD, or spend the $1,000 to recover the data and then return the laptop to HP for a new HDD.

If you did end up buying another HDD yourself, you can also purchase a Vista anytime upgrade disk and reinstall using the CD key on the bottom of your laptop. This will allow you to do a clean install as well and get your computer running the way it should be, fast.

 

Well the obvious answer would be to use the warranty or buy another drive.
You don't need to buy Vista again. A new HDD is less than 100$ (the one you have I believe), so not a big loss there if you don't want to send them the laptop.
Why would recovering cost 1000$? What do they do? Guess what's on the drive with 100$ accuracy? Manually create all the files on the HDD? Ask it nicely to work? I'm just kind of kidding, but that price seems way off to me.

 

I just googled a couple of services. I saw a couple for $199.00 and they say
No data recovery No charge.

So it looks like the going rate is around 200.00.

So, Like I said. Mission Critical, such as Term papers, Master or PHD stuff, customer accounts..... It may be worth the $200.00.

I saw avideo once. That just showed them oppening the HD up. Removing the platters. Cleaning the platters and putting them into what looked like another HD with a bunch of scopes hooked up.

Sorry I can't post the links
A couple of my posts have been deleted here becuase I put links in my posts that said I was advertisng services not to do that anymore. Just tell the people to Google the service.

 

Very Cool Video about HD recovery. Talks about clicking noise.
How to recover damaged HD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCapEFNZAJ0

There are 5 parts to this video.

another interesting one is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKc4qsrhOB8

 

thanks guys with the information, i appreciate it! & thanks for the videos.
just sucks this had to happen, wasnt even expecting it :S but I'll try looking if i could pay cheap to retrieve some the files, or if not another way

for now im gonna look into buying a new hard drive that should be more reliable, hopefully.

 

Do you by any chance know the make and model of the HDD which has failed. I know there is always at least 1% of HDD which will fail, just curious which manufacturer has the worst record.

 

i am pretty positive that its a Fujitsu 120GB hard drive, not sure what the model number could be. but I hear Fujitsu are mediocre & have a higher failure rate:s

 

Thanks for the info. My HP Laptop comes with a Toshiba HDD.

Both Toshiba and Fujitsu are niche players in HDD now while leaving Seagate, WD and Hitachi to fight it out in the mainstream market. I must say that I have good experience with both Seagate and WD in the last five years.