Can I repair a crashed Hitachi HDD? The disk will not even boot-up - you just hear a continuous clicking noise.

I extracted the disk from a Freecom Classic external hard drive.

The data are backed-up so I want to try fixing it myself. ANy advice or clues where I can find some guidelines?

Shelty, March 2008

I'd bin it personally. It sounds like the head that reads data isn't working properly. This can be exchanged from an identical hard drive but as people have said, it needs to be done in a specially dust free environment (no mr muscle will help you here!). If you get the slightest spec of dust in there, you're knackered anyway. With prices being so cheap, i'd just treat myself to a new drive :)

Ben, March 2008

Thanks for your comments, guys (and girls?). Perhaps I'll take it to my garden shed and have a little tinker... ;-)

Shelty, March 2008

I had the same problem years ago... put it this way....."its kapoott". The hard drive will never boot as the locking arm that locks the Read/write arm is stuck. This happens but very rarely. The olny thing that you can try is to take it apart and "manualy" try to fix it. But this aint recomended as they are made in a DUST FREE, CLINICAL atmosphere.

jaja, March 2008

No they are not fixable outside of a clean room.

t, March 2008

Sorry, sounds like your drive is u/s (continuous clicking is a dead giveaway). Bin it.

Mike

Mike MacSorley, March 2008

if you have extracted all information you need then just reformat.

gary, March 2008