M860TU HDD clicking/slowdowns

Hi guys,
Within a span of just a few hours, my M860TU (specs in sig) was working fine; I packed it up to take home, and when I arrived and turned it on later, the harddrive began making clicking noises and load times have slowed to a crawl (I powered it off almost immediately after hearing this).

The hdd is a Seagate 320GB SATA, 7200.4RPM, just barely a year old now (hopefully still under warranty from XoticPC). I took the backing off, to verify the sound was comng from the hdd (everything else seemed fine). I take good care of the notebook, with only minor bumps here & there, and the only thing particularly interesting on the way home tonight was that it was raining slightly (but I'm near certain no moisture could have gotten through the bag and case). What could be wrong with it?

I'm going to take the day off tomorrow to take a closer look at it, so can anyone leave me some suggestions/advice that I should carry out?

 

I suggest to backup any important files/data ASAP.
A clicking hard drive may fail at ant time making data recovery
hard or expensive.

I have seen enough customers with bad hard drives either losing important
files or pictures that they cant recreate.

 

Download HDtune and check your temps....

 

That's my greatest fear Mark. I turned it off as soon as I heard it in case the heads crashed, and am faced with the dilemma of how to back it up without spinning up the drive. If that drive fails, I'm pretty much going with it...

niff, I do have HDtune installed, but I dare not run it. I'm thinking temps aren't the issue since I'm cold-booting.

When I power it on, it sounds fine, it can access the bootloader, but as soon as it goes to load the OS, the clicking starts. I'm thinking even if the OS somehow became corrupt it shouldn't cause the clicking sounds right?

I am in a bind... do I power it on and try to salvage it while its chugging on possibly its last life, or is there any other way I can access the data and how much might that cost?

In the meantime, I'm going to start making room for a backup as you suggested Mark.
Thanks guys

 

I'd install a new HDD, install an OS on it, and try to salvage the important files from the dying HDD while it's in a external enclosure or a optical drive caddy.

 

Or, if you don't want to install an OS / don't have a spare HDD, you could always use a linux live cd to copy all important files to any computer on your network or to an external hdd.

Alternatively you can plug the possibly damaged hdd into any other computer and copy your files to another drive.

 

I've taken the HDD out:
ST9320421AS
but the SATA connectors don't look like anything I can connect to my desktop mobo, how can I connect it?

Also, doing some searching, apparently one other problem might be the G-sensor falsely going off...

 

I think the M860tu uses a adapter to mount HDD to the motherboard header.
Just remove the adapter and then it will be just like any other sata drive ports.

 

From the service manual, here's what I had in my hands:

There does seem to be an adapter over-top (19), but removing it only exposes bare pins.

I gave up staring at it and replaced the adapter, then placed the HDD back into the notebook, and powered it on. After 3-4 min of clunking, chugging, and baited breath, I was able to boot into the OS and start backing up over my network. I've also contacted XoticPC and hope I can get it replaced/upgraded from Seagate.

Conspicuously, as soon as its finished booting the OS, the noise goes away. HDD operations are still a bit slow, but no clicking, and I wonder if it's been like this for a while now...

 

Those aren't "bare pins" that is the the standard 2.5" SATA interface.

 

well, the standard SATA interface does have pins that do in fact seem to be bare.
btw its the same for 2.5" and 3.5"

 

I was looking for something like


I'm almost complete with my back-up, but at some point I will need to send in to Seagate for a replacement. Does anyone have any experience with this, or want to recommend me a good HDD or SSD replacement?

 

I have done maybe 25 RMAs from Western Digital all smooth fast.
The fastest rma for me was the next day.

though the RMA department is 45 miles away here in California.

I have never done a Seagate RMA before but I do own 2 drives from them.

But in my opinion all hard drive manufactures will have hard drive failures.

 

What is in the red circle is the same as the connector on your desktop mobo (a standard sata cable will connect here) and what is in the green circle is a standard sata power cable (which your desktop PSU should also have)