Seriously Annoyed

[neonplanet40]

Ok here goes. 8 weeks ago i bought 2 Samsung 500GB drives from Scan as they got great reviews on Custom PC.

Today one started making a clicking noise. I rebooted the computer and it hasnt worked since. So thats 435GB of data down the drain. Now the other drive has started clicking. It also has about 400GB of data on it and i have no way of backing it up. I guess its about to die too?

And even funnier. Last week i ordered £900 of computer equipment. And guess what?! another samsung drive which is now in my computer. So im stuck with these dam drives.

Is there no way to get my data back? I dont have £200+ at this time of the year to buy a few new hard drives to back up the other ones that are 8 weeks old.

Needless to say that Samsung may be able to make monitors but THEY CANT make hard drives.

Should have stuck with Western Digital as ive never had a problem with them.

Terrible to be honest. For a hard drive to only have 2 months of life in it.

Neon

[staffsMike]

It depends how much the data is worth to you. Most recovery services are around £30 to £50 but they normally tell you if the data is salvagable for free after that get it replaced under warranty and sell it if you don't want it.

There are some tools to do this stuff yourself out there but I don't know what to recommend or how much it will cost. Maybe free maybe useless.

[Agent]

Very weird. Sammys are usually some of the best out there

[5cupa]

strange normally good drives. maybe a bad batch....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The ones that I have had in the last three years or so have been pretty good!! I wonder if the Spinpoint T series are as reliable as the older P series?? I assume you have a T series drive.

[aidanjt]

I have a Samsung disk that 'sticks' when it cold starts.

[Pob255]

I'd agree with Mike here, you could look into a data recovery service if it's really important (and consider getting a spindal of DVDs and burning important stuff to dvd next time)

Clicking sounds would point to a mechanical failier of the disks, not good (maybe a bad batch)
RMA them

EDIT: might want to consider a raid array that adds redundancy next time, granted you'll lose total capasity but you'll be able to save the data if one of them dies.

[Koolpc]

Even DVD discs can have problems. I back up to a WD external HD and onto DVD too.

[this_is_gav]

With hard drive sizes the way they are I'm struggling to see why anyone wouldn't backup at the moment, but to be fair that would be of limited to use to Mr. Planet if his 2nd drive (which would presumably be a backup if he used your system) is dying too. It does sound like a bad batch though, as Samsung are very highly regarded. Then again so were Seagate before the 7200.10 series.

It might not fix your problem Mr. Planet (I just can't bring myself to calling you 'neon'), but if you've a USB external enclosure try sticking your dead drive in that and getting off any data you can (onto one of the other potentially dying drives if necessary). I can't think of a drive failure I've seen where my IcyBox won't torture it into letting me have the data, so it's worth a shot. That said, I think most of the failures I've dealt with have been controller issues more than the mechanical one it sounds like you're having. Certainly more than worth a go though.

Incidentally this week I had my first ever Western Digital drive failure. In systems I regularly use I've got 6 Raptors, 2 40gb, a 160gb, a 250gb, 4 320gb data drives, 2 500gb, a 750gb drive and lord knows how many drives in other systems at work, all without a problem, but a colleague brought a system in with a WD 80gb drive with bad sectors earlier this week. All recoverable, but still, this is a first for me.

[Pob255]

One trick to get data off a Hard drive is stick it in a bag (anti-stactic it came in ) and leave it in the fridge over night.

Sometimes they'll start working again, However if they do be warned that you'll only get roughly 20min of use out of it before it dies again.

Although it does really depend what has killed it in the first place, I've got an IDE HD that somehow got the MFT (master file table) corrupted after a reformat it worked fine and still is.

EDIT:However the clicking sound does point to mechanical failier not data corruption.

[arthurleung]

It depends how much the data is worth to you. Most recovery services are around £30 to £50 but they normally tell you if the data is salvagable for free after that get it replaced under warranty and sell it if you don't want it.

There are some tools to do this stuff yourself out there but I don't know what to recommend or how much it will cost. Maybe free maybe useless.

Where you find £30 to £50 as I have a clicking Hitachi 500G that need recovery...

[Jay]

thats why both my 500gig SP drives are in RAID 1

[staffsMike]

That's based on a old contact I used to work with (not in touch i'm affraid)

And a local company in stafford that advertise at our univeristy.. But I don't have the contact details to hand.

The big boys obviously charge a lot more.. I think its low hundreds.

[acrobat]

I read in another thread that sometimes the SATA interface on some disks, dies. Not the actual disk itself. If thats the case with your disks, you might be able to recover the data if you can access them some other way, like putting them in an external drive enclosure and connecting it via USB. If you did that, just check that you buy an external drive enclosure that supports sata (assuming your disks are SATA), because most of the external encolosures support IDE as far as I know. Also, there is no guarantee it will work.. so you will have to weight up the cost of that, against just speaking to a data recovery company, if you really want the data.

As for the Samsung disks, I think all disks are capable of being dodgy. Samsung's are usually really good. Maxtors are widely recognised as not being good, and I found that out myself when I bought one several years ago. It's hotter than the centre of the sun. I then researched Western Digi, and saw billions of people with issues with those disks. So I bought Seagate, and since then I keep seeing more and more people having trouble with those too.

So its probably just luck. Gotta keep your fingers crossed you get a good disk, and the best you can do is make sure you keep important stuff backed up. And as dodgy as all these manufacturers are, one of my Maxtor disks is still running after several years, and I have a 10gig IBM disk which is probably around 12 years old now.. still going strong.

[finlay666]

My 2 year old ones (well about 2 years) got a clicking sound...normally from overheating when the fan in my cm stacker failed

IF it runs use the utils Samsung provide on their site, then arrange an RMA through Rexo, they do have a good service, about a week turnaround and couriered back to you

[Dreaming]

That does seem unusual for a samsung drive, I've had several and they've all been very good