Your hard drive is probably fine, unless it has gotten damaged somehow. But it's new enough to not have worn out by this time.
Is it possible that your computer got an electrical surge? Something like that could damage the motherboard or the hard drive.
went back in & did f8 for a boot menu...nothing but blinking cursor. But on bootup at the bottom is does say this:
DELETE: Enter bios setup
F12: display boot menu
Upon clicking F12 these 2 options appear;
"P0: ST 500dm002-1bd142" (this is the hard drive I think)
"P0: PIONEERDVD-RW-DVR220 RS" (the recovery disk)
So should I proceed with the 2nd option to boot from the DVD or?
Yes. Go with the 2nd option -- the PIONEERDVD-RW-DVR220 RS.
ok, NO known electrical charge (power surge). Power goes on off that it so far as I know. heading on now to do the dvd boot option
Well, same story. blinking line & clickity click. look up the clicks on YouTube. seems its well known. The "heads" get stuck on the platter. Look fairly simple, if done carefully, to unstick the Heads arm. Aby thots? Goona get to the store and few thing but back later. Jim
If the heads are stuck on the platter, that means that your hard drive is trashed.
The only way to unstick the heads would be either to bang on the drive or to take the cover off of the drive and spin the platter with your finger on the edge of it. Once you open the case, however, dust gets in and ruins whatever is left of the drive.
I had a boss who opened a drive case one time. The customer had critical data on it, and the only way to get the data off of the drive was to remove the cover and then spin the platter with your finger on the outer edge of the platter. We successfully got their data off of the drive before it died.
If the heads are stuck to the platter, I would not recommend in any way your keeping this drive. You need a new drive for the computer. Are you sure that they are stuck? Can you hear any noise in the drive when the computer is booting? Can you feel any unusual vibrations or knocks when you are touching the drive? Can you smell any sort of burning smell, even a very faint one?
Just did regular boot to windows w/o the disk. No clicks. It "sounds" like its trying to physically engage the disc somehow & then gets rejected. click going in & then mild thunk on the rejections
so guess it's not stuck heads. what does that sound like to you
... con't This is near exactly the sound:
The sound of a CD Drive Opening Closing on a PC - YouTube
Its the first on that is drawing a hand sketch of a pc. If you leave it, it continues on into a different sound & you will have to go back to it. J
If your hard drive is making that sound, then it is a bad drive. Perhaps the electronics of the drive are messed up, and the drive can't figure out how to operate correctly, how to line up correctly, etc. If you had an identical drive, then you could perhaps swap the circuit boards of the two drives, to see if the problem stays with the drive or with the circuit board. But it is unlikely that you have an identical drive, or that you would even want to try doing that. You definitely need a new hard drive. By the way, very clever finding the Youtube video with the sound.
It occurs to me that your CD drive might be making the sound, even though there is no disk in it. The only way to know for sure is to remove the CD drive, and then see if the sound continues. If the hard drive is making that sound, then it's a bad drive. If the sound stops, then you have a bad CD drive (if the drive is empty).
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