I had one go on me while I was backing up data a couple of weeks ago. CLUNK, WIRRRR, CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. Bloody thing.

2 hours in the freezer helped me get the last of the data off then I sent that hard drive to hard drive heaven

Already on it :)

You usually get a feel if the hard drive is fucked when working on a computer. Just spec them in a new hard drive, saves any come back on your part

Testing with Samsung HDD tools, same problems. Hard drive is definitely goosed.

Yeah I think I'll give those a go when this Vivard program finishes. Cheers Dom :wave:

Have you tried one of the manufacturer specific hdd test tools on UBCD?

If you still have issues then i'd either drop in a spare drive and see how you get on or put the current drive in a caddy and do a test of the drive on another system; both of these would also rule out the system being fubar'd.

Got a customer's laptop in at the moment, Windows freezes when it gets to the blue welcome screen with the swirls and even the recovery partition freezes. Last time I just wiped the partition that Windows was on and then I could access the recovery partition and do a factory reset.

So all was I fine... I thought. They tried installing some software and now the same problem has come back. Running this program called Vivard on the Ultimate Boot CD and it's come up with a load of 'drive not ready' blocks in the scan. Also, it didn't show the drive make and model number etc. like it usually does when I run this program on a hard drive.

Hard drive = fucked?