Please help :( Drive suddenly started making weird noises....

[Damage Inc]

My samsuing 3tb back up drive suddenely started making weird noises, now My Pc can't see it and it's not even in device manager (rebooted), it's just flashing the lights at me and I'm scared it all gone 1.5 tb of backed up data, personal files, music, receipts everything.....all gone.

Someone tell me there's something I can do...

 

[Bob Gnarley]

Bit of a long shot but try this. Not sure how or why but this sometimes works when you can see the drive in bios but not windows. For Hdd's but might work for ssd's maybe...

Start/Windows Administrative Tools/Windows Memory Diagnostic and run the test.

Not sure about a failing drive though. I wish you luck. Hdd or ssd btw?

 

[Kevin Troschinski]

Every PC specialist-shop should be able to recover/save the data. But it could be expensive.

I have a friend running a pc shop and know he is able to, but unfortunately it does not help you at all.

 

[Turk]

Every PC specialist-shop should be able to recover/save the data. But it could be expensive.

I have a friend running a pc shop and know he is able to, but unfortunately it does not help you at all.

It can depend on what's failed in the hard drive. I've heard of services that can recover any hard drive but they have to take it apart in a clean room and basically rebuild the drive to read the data. If it's a old school hard drive the data is still there, it's just a matter of how easy it is to get it off.

If you can try the drive in another computer, do that, it may not be the drive itself that has failed, but something on your motherboard.

But if it's making noises it's probably broken something inside the drive.

 

[GEO147]

My advice is to not run any 3rd party recovery software until you read up on the matter fully.

 

[Terry Rock]

My advice is to not run any 3rd party recovery software until you read up on the matter fully.

Agreed.
Most 3rd party software advertised as recovery or low-cost on the internet are deceptive advertising.
Most say free to use or have a low cost listed.
It is only after purchasing, downloading and installing they'll then pop-up messages stating they only recover a limited amount of...not GB but MB.
There should be tough laws against deceptive advertising practices on the internet with stiff fines.

 

[pattikins]

My samsuing 3tb back up drive suddenely started making weird noises, now My Pc can't see it and it's not even in device manager (rebooted), it's just flashing the lights at me and I'm scared it all gone 1.5 tb of backed up data, personal files, music, receipts everything.....all gone.

Someone tell me there's something I can do...

Is it a internal or external hard drive?

 

[Damage Inc]

Cheers's lads, it's external HDD, tried it in another USB slot, same thing, tried it on my missuses Laptop, same thing, it's kaput and dozy me, I've just been using for storage since 2016, so it wasn't a sodding backup drive was it? D'oh. Leanrt a really harsh lesson today, HDD can instantly fail and the slightest clues should be a full warning to back up everything important. Irony is my old external drive still frigging plugged in and still works!! Kicking myself so hard mentally right now.

Going to look into professional disk recovery, any recommendations in the UK?

I'm pissed off becasue I realise now I've been getting slight warning signs, when I normally shut down my PC the two external drives spin up then shut down, well for about two weeks on and off the drive that failed would flash it's light for a bit after spinning up, I just presumed it was doing something data wise, not that it was (I presume now) a warning flash of lights.

 

[pattikins]

I've had a few external hard drive failures down the years. The last time it happened, I took it out of its case & stuck it in my docking station - that was a few years back & it's still working today. It might be that the chip/board for the sata to usb on the external case has failed.

 

[Damage Inc]

I've had a few external hard drive failures down the years. The last time it happened, I took it out of its case & stuck it in my docking station - that was a few years back & it's still working today. It might be that the chip/board for the sata to usb on the external case has failed.

Good point, although it does make a nasty clunk sound so I do think it's bolloxed.

 

[Turk]

Good point, although it does make a nasty clunk sound so I do think it's bolloxed.

Found this site that talks about the different noises. I remember hearing before that you could get a good idea of what was broken by what kind of noise it makes.

How to Identify Different Types of Hard Drives Noises?[2024]

When there is some mechanical failure in the head and platters of hard drives then it produce grinding noise. To know how the hard drives makes Clicking noise, Torn Head noise, Head Stuck noise and Platter Scratch noise. We have recorded some random noises of hard drive in our Class 100 Clean...

www.stellarinfo.co.in

 

[Damage Inc]

Found this site that talks about the different noises. I remember hearing before that you could get a good idea of what was broken by what kind of noise it makes.

How to Identify Different Types of Hard Drives Noises?[2024]

When there is some mechanical failure in the head and platters of hard drives then it produce grinding noise. To know how the hard drives makes Clicking noise, Torn Head noise, Head Stuck noise and Platter Scratch noise. We have recorded some random noises of hard drive in our Class 100 Clean...

www.stellarinfo.co.in

Nearest seems to be sound 2 on that list. Thing is how <cough> discrete are these data recovery firms? There's some "files" I don't want my wife to find out about for instance <cough>.

 

[Chrhun]

If it's your backup disk, why would you need it recovered? You have the original data anyway, just get a new backup disk and you are safe again.

 

[Damage Inc]

If it's your backup disk, why would you need it recovered? You have the original data anyway, just get a new backup disk and you are safe again.

Sigh, because I cocked up and used it just as a drive so all the data from a certain point is lost, I have another backup drive with the old data up to 2016, but everything I've done, documents, music rips etc since is gone......not entirely sure why I started doing that, but it's the first time I've done that and it's the first to go kerpluey this way (sods law)....3rd backup drive and the other two were indeed "backup" drives! Just this one.

 

[Chrhun]

I kind of guessed that, but I'm genuinely sorry for what happened to you. I guess the data recovery companies are a good shout then, I don't think they much look what kind of data is being restored.

 

[Damage Inc]

I kind of guessed that, but I'm genuinely sorry for what happened to you. I guess the data recovery companies are a good shout then, I don't think they much look what kind of data is being restored.

I was trying to figure out how it happened and realised it's the way the size of games bloated so bad in the HD era and since with 50-60 gb PER game the norm and some like GTAV, ESO, Destiny 2 being 100gb!! I play MANY games and MANY genres and can go from playing a classic like Xwing, to GTAv and Everything in between, the ony genres I don't realy play are platformers. So I don't uninstall games as I never know what I will want to play sometimes from oneday to the next, so I started to copy data to my "backup" drive, then to make room for games deleted the original data.....stupid.