indicator noise

[Aidan1]

Hi,

Can anyone help?

I was on my machine today and it started making a clicking noise (like a car indicator), then running really slowly before a blue screen came up (can't remember what it said but no fatal error message). I had to turn it off at the plug and when I rebotted it a message came up saying operating system not found. I got windows up again but not sure how or what i did but it is still making the clicking noise.

Any suggestions?

 

[ownage]

Dying hard drive, i almost gurantee it.

 

[Deathstar1]

Dying hard drive, i almost gurantee it.

I second that, the clicking will be the read heads, do not use it more than to back up your data and replace it.

 

[borat_sagdiyev]

yeah, they talked about clicking on call for help, and that it usually means a dyeing hard drive.

 

[GenoXide]

It's your hard drive. I actually JUST overcame that exact problem, an older hard drive that was only 6.4 GBs of space, who's soul purpose was to hold Windows XP, died on me. I CONSTANTLY got BSODs and the OS seldomly booted up on the first try. In either case, replace that hard drive ASAP.

 

[Aidan1]

Thanks guys,

Could you answer me another couple of questions please?

1. When buying a hard drive what do I need to go for - Does it need to be the same and if so what do I need to check?

2. How do I backup the old hard drive to the new drive.

I have never done anything like this, only other thing I have done is install a DVD rewriter!!!!!!!

Thanks again

 

[root]

A new hard drive can just replace the existing hard drive,

although for a short while you'll want to put your new hard drive in with your existing drive, format it, partition it into a c (system) and d (data) drive,

Back up all the data you want to keep from your old drive, onto the D partition of the new one.

then take out the old drive and install windows on the new one...

The fact that the drive still works is great, but the question is how long will if work for?

The new drive doesn't need to be the same, it can be bigger, smaller etc, all it has to be is a hard drive.

 

[Aidan1]

Thanks,

For a novice like me it is easy to get confused. I had a look at the website of the local computer dealer and there were dozens of hard drives to choose from. Different things like 80gb, 7200rpm, HDD ATA 133? It is the last bit that is confusing and if you go there without knowing what you want they get a bit 'sniffy' with you.

 

[GenoXide]

Thanks guys,

Could you answer me another couple of questions please?

1. When buying a hard drive what do I need to go for - Does it need to be the same and if so what do I need to check?

2. How do I backup the old hard drive to the new drive.

I have never done anything like this, only other thing I have done is install a DVD rewriter!!!!!!!

Thanks again

To answer your questions...

1. When purchasing a new hard drive, the first thign you'll want to check is to see if your motherboard is compatible with it. Is it ATA? Ultra ATA? SATA? SATA 3.0GB/s? These thigns are very important and make all the difference when purchasing a hard drive. You can't just find one, and buy it, you must make sure that you have the compatibility for it.

One way to find out is what time frame was your PC built in? Was it built this year? A year ago? Two years? Three? If it's three years, get an ATA drive, if it's two years, buy SATA, if it's recent, get SATA II or otherwise known as SATA 3.0GB/s.

2. To back up your drive, simply make sure that you have another hard drive installed. Or a rather large USB flash drive, the size of the USB flash drive should be equivalent to that of the files/folders you want to back up.

After this, just simply go into Windows XP, go to Explore, right click on the hard drive you wish to back up, click on Properties, then in Tools I believe it is, it should say 'Back up'. Click on that, it should give a list of files or folders, select the files/folders you wish to back up, then click on 'OK'. And then just wait it out until Windows finshes the task.

After this, install your new hard drive. install Windows XP onto your hard drive, then once finished with that go into Windows, click on explore, make sure that your USB flash drive or hard Drive is inserted/installed, whichever device you backed your data up onto. Then, you can view all the folders and files that you backed up onto that disk/drive.



However a more conventional and much less complicating way of doing this is to have a DVD Burner! Purchase some DVD-Rs, then, simply get software that can burn the data onto the disk, such as Nero Burning Rom. Then just drag and drop the files/folders into the menu, click burn, wait about 10 minutes pending on how fast the DVD Burner is, and presto, all files and folders are backed up in a matter of minutes and ready for archiving!