I have a Dell dim XPS 600 running win98se. I turned it on last night and was on the internet and then there was a strange clicking noise and a blue screen appeared with the message can not read c drive. I rebooted and then I got the message "operating system not found". I rebooted again using win98 boot disk and tried to run scandisk with no luck. I opened the computer took out the harddrive and then just connected it up again when I rebooted this time the coputer went into win98 so I began to use nero to backup data but unforunately after a few minutes it gave the cannot read c drive error again. Is my harddrive finished and if so is there anything I can do to salvage data on it. Would opening it up help,is there just a screw loose ??????

Help Please

It seems to me that you have a dead hard drive on your hands.

So... what to do now? If the machine is still under warranty, let them sort it out. If the drive is less than three years old, depending on brand, it may still be under warranty - contact the HD manufacturer.

If none of the above are true, then the question becomes "how good are your backups? Check out the website of the HD manufacturer - they may have a diagnostic utility that may help if you are lucky. If all else fails, a few light taps may help, but that is a last resort. If you do get it to boot, get as much data off as you can - preferably to another HD.

I learned my lesson the hard way - This happened to me TWICE last year. Now I have a tapestreamer and run automated backups.

Good luck.

Prang

I wonder if that clicking noise was the I/O Heads clattering against the disk itself. If your desperate to get the data off it, do a freeze and then mount it as a slave in another machine, see if you can get anything off it.

I've done that before and can confirm that it has actually worked.

Just got a PM asking what a freeze is, so, here's a bit more info.

There are occasions where a HDD can fail because the head slips off and streches across the side of the disk itself. This is often identified by an uncharacteristic "Clunking" sound.

Physically freezing the drive can shrink the heads back into place, giving you time to get any valuable data off it.

Jumper the drive as a slave and then seal it into a plastic bag and leave it in the freezer overnight. Next day, open up another machine and perpare it to receive a slave drive. Whip the sick drive out of freezer and stick it in the machine pronto. Boot up the machine and get the data copied onto the machine's other drive. If it works for a while, then starts failing again, you can repeat the freezing process as many times as you like. Ideally, you want to leave it overnight, but often, three hours can be enough.

it seems like your hard drive has developed bad clusters.
if you have tried what the others replied to you but it didn't work, I can give you some
advices (i had once the same problem)

1. you can try changing the electronic interface of the hard drive to recover
the lost data.
2. use a recovery program like TIRAMISU with 80% chance of succes
For that it takes several steps:
- get the program
- get another harddrive(for the backup)
- mount the two hard drives on the same computer
- start the recovery with TIRAMISU
if you don't know how to use the program mail me