Weird hard drive failure - Video

[weedo]

Ok I have had this Maxtor 6H500R0 for about 4 years. It's a 500GB IDE hard drive. Yesterday my hard drive monitoring tool (Hard Disk Sentinel) detected that the drive had replaced one bad sector, I was watching a movie from it and it was lagging very badly. It also told me that my "Run Out Cancel" was too high.

Today I was just browsing the net and the drive completely disapeared from windows, my HDD software notified me as soon as it did. I took the drive out of my computer and hooked it up to a spare, same problem, it doesn't show in windows.

The drive does show in the bios. It makes this weird clicking noise, it sounds like it's loading. It isn't the regular click of death that I have heard in youtube videos, it's definately different, I recorded it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDtI-igK3uw

The loud fan in the background is the 8800GT on my spare pc I'm using to boot this drive. The hard drive makes this sound at all times now, simply by being powered on it makes this sound no matter if it's in the bios or in windows.

Anyone ever seen this before? Is the drive completely dead?

Thanks guys :)

[masta121]

Looks like it's pretty much dead. Sounds like the motor has finally had it. Still, 5 years is a pretty good run for a hard drive.

[Washell]

Final verdict (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJQwHwP0ojI)

Edit: If there is data on it you'd hate to lose, you could try buying the exact same model (second hand preferably) and switch the circuit boards. Given its disappearance from windows, I'd say it's more likely to be an electronics failure than a mechanical failure.

[handi360]

lol you hd is having an identity crisis, it wants to be a printer from the sounds ;) but yeah its fubar.

[wing0zero]

If you have data you need back give this a try first, you can download a trial to see if it works if it does you will have to buy it though to recover files larger that 64kb i own a copy it's saved my ♥♥♥ twice once on a dead HD like yours it showed in BIOS but not in Windows and once when i went through a dynamic disk problem

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml

[marie pavie]

I have had partial luck with repeated rebooting on dead drives, but "disappeared from windows" doesn't sound good.

[dragonslyer1086]

drive is nice and toasty. data recovery software most likely will not assist you. you can either try replacing the circuit board as others have suggested, or send the drive off to a professional company to retrieve the data for you, with the bill starting in the hundreds of dollars, and easily climbing into the thousands.