Hard Drive Beeping?

[DrGrafix]

I have a IBM Deskstar 41.0 Gig drive, relatively new (built June 2001) that has been a slave drive in one of my PCs. I had some problems with this machine and subsequently installed a new root drive and OS. I had saved a lot of data to my slave before making the switch, and when I reassembled, I'm getting a constant beeping from the drive. The machine doesn't recognize that it's there. As an alternative, I tried installing it in a USB-connected exterior case. The instructions tell you to make sure the drive is set to master (not slave) and the beeping starts whenever I power up the drive. Or rather it spins up for a few seconds, and then starts beeping. The beeping almost sounds like a beep code; two deep sounding beeps followed by one high-sounding one, then this repeats over and over.

Anyone have any ideas on how to either get the drive to work or to extract data from it without spending a fortune?

 

[garebo]

When exactly does the beeping occur? Is it during bootup, after entering windows?

I have never heard of a hard drive beeping. I have heard of the bios beeping and win os beeping (error message), but never an actual hard drive beeping.
Tell you what, disconnect the hard drive and boot up, see if the beeping is still there.



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[garebo]

One other thought. Go into your bios and see if you have
s.m.a.r.t listed. If you do then enable it. This little bios gem, when enabled, checks all hard drives on bootup, only takes a couple seconds, and makes sure the hard drives are in good shape. If not, smart will give you a warning. If you get a warning from smart its time to save your data and either repair or replace the hard drive.


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[Krosus]

Not really a help here but, Those IBM drives were also known as DEATHstars as they died at a phenomenal rate and if it lasted this long you have been pretty durn lucky.
One thing I may suggest although not in itself without risk is hotplugging(connecting up) the drive in after your machine has booted and seeing if windows picks it up.

 

[garebo]

Krosus, I know about the deathstars, most people do, but my memory bank tells me it was the 30 gig models, maybe memory bank is faulty, maybe it was 40 gigs also? I know the issue was corrected at some point. Not really knocking IBM but they did have some bad hard drives, bad enough that word got around to pretty well everyone. Again, from my faulty memory, didnt one have to look at the drive and see where and when it was mfged, and that would tell you if it was from that bad batch?

However, i have never heard of hotplugging the way you are talking about. Isnt that EXTREMELY dangerous? I certainly stand to be corrected here, thats for sure. I suffer severe memory issues from time to time, seriously, not a joke. I know some ide caddies had that ability under certain circumstances, but i have never heard of plugging a hard drive in while computer was up and running.

And i have never heard of a hard drive beeping.

DrGrafix: Waiting to hear what you have to say about the suggestions i offered.
thanks



Curious to see the answers.



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[Krosus]

I used to do drive hotplugging a lot, not with Serial ATA that plain just fouls up, It's just like plugging in a USB drive while the machine is on, obviously leave the drive bolted in its bay and just push the cable in when your ready.
Poor mans caddy idea just be careful as I said.

 

[garebo]

Well, you learn something new every day. I would have sworn doing that would foul up the data on the hard drive badly and even render the hard drive useless, as in fubar.

Please dont be offended, but i would like to hear what a few others have to say about that. Its just got me baffled.
What do you mean by being careful?

DrGrafix, i hope you dont mind, im sure you would like to hear more about this anyway, i hope?


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[garebo]

By the way, which cable you do you leave unplugged, the molex or the ide cable or both?


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[dbData]

DrGrahix,

The drive is beeping because the heads are stuck to the platter (stiction). You'll find an article that may help at

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com/library/hard-drive-stiction.pdf.

I suspect the drive is not spinning. If it really is, the heads are stuck somewhere else.

In that series drive the heads are supposed to park off the platters when powered down.

Relatively New (built 2001)???? That's relatively old by computer standards. Doesn't fart dust yet, but it's gettin' close.


garebo,

It was pretty much the 20 to 60GB "deathstars" that sucked, although the 30GB gave the series a bad, yet deserved rep.

Krosus is correct. Hot-plugging still works. In and of itself it doesn't cause problems with data. It's usually the "accidental" mis-plugging that causes problems. Whether the OS will recognize the drive depends on several things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Personally I think the risk is too great unless you have access to replacement PCB's.



Rick

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com

 

[garebo]

Personally I think the risk is too great unless you have access to replacement PCB's."
So there is risk involved then.
In this particular case i guess i can see doing that as the drive is likely fubar anyway.
But thanks for the info, always good to know these things.



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