Computer fell off desk - Hard drive Chriping

dan_plus_o

New Member
Hello, so the other day my doorbell rang and I quickly got out of my chair causing it to spin around really fast and the chair hit my computer and knocked it on the floor (about 3 foot drop). Now I have noticed that when my hard drive is working hard it sometimes makes a chirping sound. When playing FEAR it will sometimes chirp every second and then stop when I pause the game.So I am assuming that the hard drive didn't take the impact of the fall too well and is on its way out. So basically I am wanting to get a new hard drive and transfer everything over before my current drive dies and I lose all my data. I was wondering what the best way to do this is.. Are there ways to make an exact copy of one hard drive and put it on another one? Or should I just reinstall windows from scratch and then hook up my current drive as secondary to transfer the files over to the new drive?

Also, is there anything else that could stop working over time due to the impact of the fall? Everything seems to be working fine now (Except for HDD Chriping) but I am a little worried that something else might be effected and could cause more damage in the future if left alone. So is there anything else you think could be effected due to the impact of the fall? Only other damage I could find is one of the front fans in my Antec 900 case has a broken fan blade (The fan is actually the one that is blowing air on the hard drive so it appears that area (top front) toke most of the impact).
 
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A Chirping sound could be the hard drive spinning,

there are programs around that do clone hard drives.... i'm not sure which ones are good or the names of them are so i'll let someone else do that.
 
Get a USB flash drive or something and back up all your most important data NOW! The HDD may die on you any moment, before you even get a chance to make a clone of it... b-up your mission critical stuff right now while you still can (if you can, that is...)
 
'Chirp' or 'Click'?

Chirp is, well...??? Click = bad...very very bad.

In the spirit of 100% protection, I'd back up all your important files to CD/DVD *now* (stop reading and do it!) just to play it safe in case your chirps are actually clicks.

<--Up way too late for his own good
 
Yep. As everyone said, backup, move, or burn your important data now.
As far as the new hard drive is concerned, the best way, is to start over by doing a clean install of Windows. You can, however, use Acronis True Image to copy the contents of the old drive to the new drive. Hopefully the old drive will hang on long enough to do it.
 
I have backed up a few important stuff on a 4GB flash drive however I haven't backed up everything. I just ordered a 750GB Hard Drive from www.tddirect.ca so hopefully it will arrive before my hard drive completely dies.

I ended up installing a program called Active SMART and so far here is what the log looks like after aprox. 2 hours of use (No Gaming).
activesmartng8.png


I will try and get an audio clip of the sound
 
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^ Good call with the new Drive:) The most frustrating thing about dying Drives is that there is zero way to tell when it will finally kick the bucket. Some are fine for months, others hours. The best thing to do is to not take any risks (which you aren't) and backup/replace immediately. I don't really understand the whole video thing - sounds like a LOT of un-needed work.
 
^ Good call with the new Drive:) The most frustrating thing about dying Drives is that there is zero way to tell when it will finally kick the bucket. Some are fine for months, others hours. The best thing to do is to not take any risks (which you aren't) and backup/replace immediately. I don't really understand the whole video thing - sounds like a LOT of un-needed work.

well at least a new drive is coming.
 
I was planning on getting a new hard drive as soon as I heard the weird chirping noises. The main reason I made this post is to see if there is anything else that you think could be affected by the fall. Is there some things that are more likely to be damaged then others?
 
Components most likely to be damaged as a result of a fall would be ones that have moving parts in them i.e. HDDs, Fans, and other drives. I'd say that it's very hard by break any other components by dropping them...
 
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