TalkingSoft.com Forums: Hard Drive Clicking - TalkingSoft.com Forums

Hi all,

I have a HP pavilion pc running Vista basic, the hard drive has just started clicking and the system will not start up.
I don't know much about the driver other than it is 180GB, the ram as recently been upgraded to 2GB.
Help please!!!!!

well.. do u get a beep sound or a click sound..

if it is a beep sound then ram wouldnt have been placed correctly in the slot... so.. just remove it and place it correctly....

if its a click .. then better try to replace the hardisk,,.. i think tat may be the only sol....
but better have other's opinion too,

yes it is def a clicking noise thanks

Ticking / clicking is bad. I've seen many over the years, cuz I'm an old man. I am almost certain it is caused by the dreaded G's (shock). Has it got knocked around lately? Fell off the desk, etc.? I'm not sure (And would *really* like to know myself!) if it's the circuit board (doubtful) or the heads/platters/head stepper motor/spin motor/etc.

Sorry, but so far I've never 'won' the dreaded tic-tic... That's why I'd like to know, if it's the circuit board, one could buy the same model drive from eBay and swap the board in. I've swapped a few times and saved data from other problems, but I've never been lucky enough to find a 'mate' to a tic-tic-er yet.

Anyone?

-Cy

The hard drive head is failing. Expect a hard drive head crash. Check if the hard drive bays are straight and if the drive is screwed in. My hard drive just started making a clicking noise the other day and will not boot up my computer. I get a message that says "alert system fan not detected"
press F1 to retry or F2 for setup.

The original post for this thread is June, 2008; two years ago. Those posting to the thread are generally correct: A clicking hard drive, and a machine that will not boot to the OS, indicate a hard drive failure. The failure may be complete, or it may be partial; the critical factor is that it will not permit Windows to load.

The clicking is most likely repeated disk seek activity. This may indicate a problem ranging from failure of the disk controller, to an inability of the BIOS to access a location on the disk necessary to continue a successful load of the system's OS.

An initial response to failure to load an OS is to use an alternative method to load one; these include using a CD or DVD based emergency disk to provide OS support as well as substituting a new system disk for the one which is causing the problem. The latter may involve buying a new disk, installing your OS on it and booting from that disk.

If the system will not boot from alternative OS sources, the problem may be with the BIOS itself; this can be from bad BIOS settings but also may indicate a failure of the CMOS chip containig the BIOS.

If the system can be booted using alternative OS sources, and the problem is "only" disk failure preventing loading of the OS, then other data on the drive may be salvageable. In fact, using good disk drive maintenance and repair tools, the entire disk, save for data on a few bad sectors, may be salvageable and useable. The drive repair software should be able to tell us if that is the case, or whether it should be discarded.

REMEMBER: Just because the disk has an error or errors resulting in repeated disk seeks (clicking) while attempting unsuccessfully to load an OS does not mean that the data on the disk is no longer present and accessible. If you chose to discard such a disk, treat it as if it still contains, and will report all of the information you have stored on it to anyone who happens to possess it.