[setmenu]

My friend has an Acer 5000 laptop which is around 6 months old. [just out of guarantee!]
In the last few days one of the hard drives has started making an intermittent 'pinging' sound .
Not sure what is making it, but it gives the impression of the lever holding the reader making an excursion and flicking back.

Anyone here experience something similar or knows what the cause could be?
I am have no idea whether the problem is with the drive itself or a signal telling it to do it?

 

[will75]

I've had two harddrive crashes on my tablet. I always had little warning signs like that before they went bye bye. Tell your friend to back everything up ASAP just to be sure.

 

[jpelg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by will75 I've had two harddrive crashes on my tablet. I always had little warning signs like that before they went bye bye. Tell your friend to back everything up ASAP just to be sure.

x2!

 

[digitalmind]

I've had three harddisks fail on me so far, each of them making a beeping or ticking noise about a week before they died. Tell him to back up now and expect the worst.

(My Acer laptop harddisk died 8 months after I got it.)

 

[milkpowder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpelg x2!

x3

I've had a few similar experiences too. Once it was my iPod. If you've got SMART HDD monitoring, you can see what it says. Sometimes, it says something like "Hard drive failure imminent".

 

[setmenu]

Thanks for the views.

My friend is a student and she is too far away from me to help her directly
with this.
I suggested it might be possible to use the other hard drive [the machine has two] and replace the faulty one at a later date.
I have no idea how to go about this or whether the supplied backup disc's contain a copy of the operating system.

I am not experienced with this stuff or my friend is even less so.
Any suggestions would be most appreciated.



.

 

[AlanY]

I agree with what other have said. This clicking is often called the "Click of Death" and it indicates that the actuator or servo is about to die. It's important to copy any valuable data off the drive and stop using the drive immediately. Don't delay. If your friend needs to delay copying important data off the drive, disconnect the drive's power. Don't let it go on spinning, as failure is only a short time away. Once the drive physically dies, it's often extremely difficult to get any information off it. Sometimes people put the drive in a refrigerator and manage to get a few more minutes of use before it heats up again, but that's not guaranteed.

 

[setmenu]

Thing is the operating system is on the drive, the other drive is unused as yet.
I am assuming the ping is coming from the drive that is in regular use.
Once the faulty drive fails so does the computer.

She does have 3 discs supplied called 'recovery discs'.
What are they for?
Would they help her reload the operating system into the other drive?


My own experience with computers has been fortunate, They keep working[thus far!]
so I have so I have not had the need to learn what to do in the event of such a failure.

I would guess that the machine would work with only one drive , so the
second drive could become the 'C'.


.

 

[plainsong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by setmenu She does have 3 discs supplied called 'recovery discs'. What are they for? .

Ugh. I think she's better off calling tech support of the brand in question. Seriously.

 

[setmenu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by plainsong Ugh. I think she's better off calling tech support of the brand in question. Seriously.

Ugh aside, the plan is to get a new drive and go from there.
Tech support is no doubt of the $ a minute variety and would not be wallet friendly for a student!


.

 

[plainsong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by setmenu Ugh aside, the plan is to get a new drive and go from there. Tech support is no doubt of the $ a minute variety and would not be wallet friendly for a student! .

But you're in this situation of the blind leading the blind. If you don't know how to use a system recovery disk or how to make one hard drive master and the other slave, then how can you hope to help? I think she's better off, if not calling Acer, then taking it into a repair shop.

 

[Wodgy]

System recovery disks typically erase the hard drive and then restore the hard drive to the state it had when the computer came from the factory. Typically you just insert the first one and then boot the computer, and it will take over from there. Take the clicking hard drive out before you do this, of course, and be aware it probably will erase whatever is currently on the hard drive.

 

[milkpowder]

here's another alternative - "chkdsk /r" in recovery console or cmd "chkdsk C: /r"

That sometimes works.