Most hard drives in use today have a MTBF (mean time between failure) of 300,000 hours or more. In my experience, most hard drives die well before this, thanks to innumerable starts and stops, grease breakdown caused by heat, mistreatment (dropping is the worst), bumping of the computer case while the hard drive is running, a stray piece of dust inside the drive, static electricity, power surges, mechanical failure of a part, overheating, etc.
Your case sounds like "stiction," which is sort of a combination of sticky and friction, or static friction, or whatever. It's usually caused when lubricant in the drive's bearings congeals or otherwise "grabs" the shaft to which the platters are attached. The "grab" isn't that tight, and usually the platters can be broken free by holding the drive in one hand and twisting it sharply back and forth. A slap or two with a hand also helps. But pounding the drive on a hard surface is a no-no. I've managed to get quite a few hard drives with stiction running again using this method. I try to get them to spin up, then put them in an external hard drive case or a mobile IDE drive attached to or installed in my StarMax testbed machine and copy their contents over to a 40 GB hard drive. Then I copy the contents to a "good" drive and recycle the "bad" drive. -- Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "maxtek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "iMac List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 8:33 AM Subject: Re: hard drive clicking > I know it is dying and I already have a replacement drive. My question was, > is there any tricks to getting it to boot when you have the stiction > (spelling?) problem. So I can back it up. Aside from the smacking it trick. > What exactly causes the stiction problem? Did the lubricant in the drive dry > up? Something must cause these platter to read head problems to just come up > out of the blue. > > MaxTek > > Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 11:28:20 -0400 > Subject: Re: hard drive clicking > From: Bruce Klutchko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > On 5/24/04 11:15 AM, "maxtek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Any suggestions will be appreciated and thanks. > > > > MaxTek > > > It is DYING!! Back it up as soon as you can get it started up. If startup is > hard, try starting up several times, or try booting from a CD or an external > drive. > > Do this before you lose ALL your data. > -- > Bruce > ____________________________________________________ > B R U C E K. klutch-at-erols.com > > > -- > The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... > > Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | > - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! | > > Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> > > iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> > --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; > Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > >The Think Different Store > http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
