[msharifi]

Hi everyone I’m new here, hoping some of you computer wizards can help me out. A few days ago we had thunderstorms, my pc was on, and before I could shut it down properly it suddenly turned off, it’s connected to a power surge. Other appliances didn’t turn off except just my computer, so it wasn’t really an outage.

Now when I try to boot windows 7 it gets stuck on the logo screen and the hard drive makes a small clicking noise every 2 seconds for about 15 seconds and then it stops, and the screen stays on “starting windows” no matter how long I leave it.

After I restart my pc the hard disk is no longer detected unless I power off the pc and turn it on again. The same thing happens when I try to run recovery or partition programs, even if I physically change its sata port location or boot order in BIOS, as it’s the main active boot partition. The hard drive is 7-8 years old, but never showed signs of failure or made clicking noises before.

Now I do have a ghost image backup of C: drive and P: (programs) on USB, but I have 2 other partitions on it which contain lots of media files, large installed games, docs, programs etc. I don’t mind If I eventually have to reinstall windows on a new drive and then restore from backup image, but I desperately need the other files and games to be backed up just incase the disk is actually failing. Will turning this drive into an external help at all?

Thanks for your time. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Corday]

Get a new drive, preferably SSD and use your ghost image to return fully to operational.

 

[msharifi]

Hi everyone I’m new here, hoping some of you computer wizards can help me out. A few days ago we had thunderstorms, my pc was on, and before I could shut it down properly it suddenly turned off, it’s connected to a power surge. Other appliances didn’t turn off except just my computer, so it wasn’t really an outage.

Now when I try to boot windows 7 it gets stuck on the logo screen and the hard drive makes a small clicking noise every 2 seconds for about 15 seconds and then it stops, and the screen stays on “starting windows” no matter how long I leave it.

After I restart my pc the hard disk is no longer detected unless I power off the pc and turn it on again. The same thing happens when I try to run recovery or partition programs, even if I physically change its sata port location or boot order in BIOS, as it’s the main active boot partition. The hard drive is 7-8 years old, but never showed signs of failure or made clicking noises before.

Now I do have a ghost image backup of C: drive and P: (programs) on USB, but I have 2 other partitions on it which contain lots of media files, large installed games, docs, programs etc. I don’t mind If I eventually have to reinstall windows on a new drive and then restore from backup image, but I desperately need the other files and games to be backed up just incase the disk is actually failing. Will turning this drive into an external help at all?

Thanks for your time. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Edit: Things I’ve tried:

EASEUS Startup Repair - the only program that “worked”, meaning I was able to do a BCD repair on C: partition. But still the same problem.

Safe mode. - (clicking)
Windows Repair / Recovery (same Clicking issue)
3 different recovery / partition programs - programs eventually load, but the main hard disk is not detected.

Specs: ASUS mb (I can’t get exact motherboard model as I can’t boot into windows, and bios doesn’t show it)
CPU: Intel i5 2400, Ram: 16gb Kingston (1600), GPU: ASUS / Radeon strix 2gb

Will update with proper info once I get access to windows or with other 3rd party applications. Thanks once again.

 

[msharifi]

Get a new drive, preferably SSD and use your ghost image to return fully to operational.

Cheers, might have to just do that. Just really hope I can get the other files back....

 

[spunk.funk]

Any HDD that makes a clicking, scraping or any other noise other then a normal hum and spin up sound is a drive that has failed. The only way to get files off of it is to send it off to the very expensive Data Recovery service. Most people can't afford this option,

 

[HavFun]

Why did your computer turn off when other devices in your home did not? Because your power conditioner likely includes an over-voltage shutdown mode and/or an under-voltage shutdown mode that protects connected devices from receiving damaging high-voltages or stressing the device with low voltages. Since you have a power conditioner and not an uninterruptible power supply, all your device could do was to disconnect all connected devices from power to protect them. If that happened while the hard disc was being updated, you could have suffered a partial write that has caused the drive to now be problematic because what you had on it has been damaged by the uncontrolled shutdown. If the hard disk is not damaged, it can be reformatted and you can restore your backup onto the hard disk to restore operation. But if that does not work, you will have to install Windows from scratch, then install each application you use, then copy all the data from the original hard disk so you have everything back on your hard disk.