Freeze HD or Knoppix?

January 18, 2007 3:57 PM

I turn computer on then drive spins up and then a very low click and the machine turns off! My question is will I benefit from putting this drive (120GB) in the freezer in a plastic bag then trying again or should I try and read from Knoppix, though I don't know if the machine will even boot enough for me to get to the BIOS to change the drive order and boot from CD.
posted by thinktwice to computers & internet (9 comments total)

The two solutions are exclusive. The freezer trick solves physical problems with the drive where the Knoppix solution would help solve problems with the underlying data.

Clicking hard drives is usually a physical issue. However if the system crashes before you are able to get to the bios then the issue might be something else (memory,processor) and the click might just be a result of the power being dropped from the HD during startup. Try disconnecting the hd and then booting to a cd just to make sure that the problem lies with the hd.
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 4:12 PM on January 18, 2007

Are you sure it's a problem with the hard drive? I've had a lot of hard drive problems, but I don't think they've ever lead to the computer turning itself off.

Disconnect the drive from the power and the data cable and try starting the machine. What happens?

Even if it starts, I would be suspicious that you have a power supply problem.
posted by Good Brain at 4:25 PM on January 18, 2007

Is that (on, spin, click) everything that happens when you turn on your computer? If not, then what else happens? If so, try disconnecting all of your drives and other nonessential hardware (probably everything but motherboard, processor, ram, and video card) to see if the motherboard will boot by itself at least to the point where it looks for a drive to read from.

If it doesn't get that far, you might want to use a friend's computer to extract your data rather than tackle that problem concurrently with your motherboard problems.
posted by concrete at 4:31 PM on January 18, 2007

I wouldn't have thought that a borkened hard drive would shut the PC down.

I'd try the disk in another machine before doing anything.

I second Good Brain's power supply suspicion.
posted by pompomtom at 4:45 PM on January 18, 2007

Yes, that click is the only thing that happens, then the whole unit powers off. I will try the suggestions. Well most of them then report back
posted by thinktwice at 5:11 PM on January 18, 2007

From the mention of how rapid the shutdown is, I'd recommend checking that the problem isn't related to the CPU overheating.

On laptops that I've had where the fan has been disabled the system would suddenly shut down without warning a few minutes into use - if your system uses a hotter running CPU or if the heat sink has come unstuck then that might cause the thermal cut-out to kick in very quickly indeed.

The clunk could be your hard disk parking the head as it loses power.

In which case the data on your disk is probably OK but you might need another system to use to get at it.

Best case scenario, you have a desktop, the CPU heatsink has come away and you need to re-attach it or you need to replace the heatsink fan.

Worse case, you have a laptop and you're looking at quite an engineering challenge to even check that the heat sink is still attached to the CPU, let alone re-attach it and replacing the fans inside the laptop would be challenging.

Worst case, it's something else entirely and I've been no help at all.
posted by koshmar at 5:37 PM on January 18, 2007

Even with no hard drive in the computer, you should get to a BIOS screen. If you don't even get that far, the problem is likely not with your hard drive.
posted by chrisamiller at 8:15 PM on January 18, 2007

It's a faulty power supply, guaranteed. I just replaced one on a machine with exactly these symptoms.
posted by flabdablet at 12:21 AM on January 19, 2007

FWIW (admittedly not much) when I had a laptop with these exact symptoms the culprit was, as koshmar mentioned, an unstuck heatsink.
posted by moift at 5:31 AM on January 19, 2007