External hardrive not "loading".

Dear De Vandal,
Tech.wise what you said in your posts is true! Clicking sounds are very bad indeed! I was a member of techguy.org and my area of interest was"general security". One of my friend's signature tune on the site was "if you do not take backup of a backup ,then the original backup is as good as gone"!

My understanding of there HDs ,especially the Extn. ones is, a lot of "movement" during transport is the harbinger of all the trouble! I stay in an East-coastal city named "Nellore" which is 112 miles from Madras in India (now, renamed as Chennai) and i went by car to bring the Extn.HDD(Seagate Free Agent Pro), rather than receiving it by courier!

Contrary to perceptions, the road from my place to Madras (National Highway-5) is a 6 lane toll road and is akin to driving on a German Autobahn! If that is the kind of care,one is willing to bestow on such "rugged but delicate" hardware, it will respond in kind! Does it not?(with a few exceptions)

The Acronis Drive Monitor results show that there are "uncorrectable" sectors, or "bad blocks and the "health" is not all that bad (77%), as the recommendation by the program is to buy a new one if the health degrades below 50%!
Regards,
Sreedhav:)

DeVandal said:

sreedhav

It is reasonable that you can trust the validity of the diagnostic health report. ALL drives, either currently or eventually, contain bad blocks and unrecoverable sectors.

What you must consider is the author or agent of the diagnostic program itself - it is provided by the party who will have to honor the warranty. 50% health before you RMA the drive is absurd and will likely take you outside of the warranty period.

RMA that drive. I would not bother with such effort in transporting the drive, however, unless you enjoy the ride. The mechanisms that can fail due to poor handling will likely fail immediately if they are subject to shipment mishandling. Bad sectors and clusters are not likely to occur as a result of moving a drive without power. Shock while spinning is another matter.

Dear De Vandal, It was an educative post! Thanks ! I really enjoyed the ride for two reasons,the courier handlers in INDIA are most unreliable and secondly, my kids were studying in Madras and i could pay a flying visit and in the process collect the extn.HD (4 years back). My first recommendation to the @op should/would be to chill it! 1)Stop using it pronto! and 2) cover it with a towel and cool it in the refrigerator! I have seen miracles happen with that advise! I am now typing from a Toshiba lappy and it has a 320 GB internal HD. The Acronis D.Monitor showed it's health to be 47%, with bad blocks, 20 days back! When i posted the prob. in this forum, i was advised to immediately stop using the laptop and to cool the Internal HD! I decided to cool the entire laptop instead! i covered it with a towel and PUT IT IN THE DEEP FREEZER FOR 15 MINUTES (sorry for the bold type!) at intervals of 45 minutes thrice! Then with trepidition i started the machine and went thru' the routine of chkdsk /R and chkdsk /F and the laptop's purring along! Surprise: the health climbed to 92% and is staying there(according to Acronis drive monitor). A chkdsk done later revealed NO BAD SECTORS. You treat these thinking machines with loving care and they return it in multiples is my philosophy! Regards, Sreedhav ps: this browser's acting up and everything i type in paras is coming out as a pack! Sorry for causing sore eyes!

Dear Skulblaka,
QUOTE " Huh, Recuva began the scan, it'll take a while but it's scanning. 13% done so far, let's hope for the best." UNQUOTE. That's good news indeed. scanning a 2TB HD will take time! Being a cool cat as you are, you may take another nap! I am really happy that you are using Recuva,from the piriform stable! The one redeeming point is your disk health being 77%!

Best wishes,
Sreedhav:)