Recent HDD noises and other problems...

[KyleRD]

Just today my mother's hard drive went out on her laptop, and was making this incredibly loud ticking noise. Now, after updating to Windows 8.1 on my laptop, I am noticing that my laptop is starting to make a small ticking noise as well. It comes at irregular intervals and sometimes completely stops for few seconds but starts back up again. I am sort of freaking out because I literally need this laptop for college, and the warranty that I thought I bought last year which would cover this never went through with the company (Lenovo). I bought it over the phone with them, but I just checked my debit card and there is no record of me purchasing it on my card either. So my laptop doesn't have a warranty on it and I think my HDD is going out... I am really hoping I'm just being paranoid but just to be safe, I'd like to know what my options are.

I'm really not very tech savvy when it comes to computer hardware, let alone laptop hardware. I have a Lenovo Y580 Ideapad. Do I have a problem I should be worrying about here, and if so, what are my options for resolving it, and how much would it cost? I'd like a 1 TB hard drive, and I'm a poor college student so I can't do anything to pricey. And if I need to back up my hard drive, do I need to buy an external one and how much would that cost?

Thank you so much in advance. I'm sorry my post is a little scattered, I'm just incredibly worried right now. As an engineering major, having my laptop go out on me is the very last thing that I need during the semester.

UPDATE: I turned it off and back on, and the clicking stopped until I decided to run a disk scan to see if there was anything wrong with it. The scan came up with nothing but it is now making a clicking noise again. Keep in mind it is a very very small noise, you wouldn't be able to hear it about 5 feet away.

 

[Brennen1350]

TL DR your looking at a minimum price of $60 dollars and probably a good 5 to 10 hours of work.

Bad news, yes your hard drive is failing

Good news, You might have a month or 3 (possibly longer, possibly shorter) before it completely goes
You can run a disk check to confirm this, (this takes anywhere between 5 hours to 24 hours)
(I have refused to "upgrade" to windows 8 so I will post a link of someone else explaining how)
http://http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disk-error-checking-windows-8

Your only solution really is to buy a new hard drive and transfer the data over.

Step 1:
Find your replacement hard drive, make sure it is a 2.5" drive (3.5" is for desktops)
I suggest sites like new egg or tiger direct and prices will vary anywhere from $60 - $150 ($600 for a SSD)
cheap: $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149377
reliable: $90
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W01AZ4555
You might want to look yourself, flash sales come and go and you might be able to find more reliable gear cheaper.

Step 2:
Backing up if possible, now while you wait for the drive to ship if you get a chance try to back up your most important data. I don't know about your school but mine has it's own server that allots each of it's students a certain amount of memory. If your school doesn't have this then you might want to back up your files on a cloud service like dropbox or googles new cloud system. Of course you can't back up your whole system to these but you should be able to get the important stuff.

Step 3:
More bad news, your going to need to obtain a new operating system and drivers to go with your hard drive. If your computer came with your operating systems instillation disk than this will be piss easy. If it didn't than this will be very difficult.

Step 4:
Replacing laptop hard drive is actually extremely easy. Don't worry you won't damage anything by taking the screws out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4TvcBp1u8 Here is a youtube video of a guy installing a new hard drive into the same model.

Step 5
Insert your Operating System CD's into your drive bay, it will ask how to install them and is pretty user friendly. Then insert your systems drivers CD's and install all the drivers.

Step 6
Transferring your files over from your old hard drive to your new one is going to be a little bit of a challenge that I will edit in later if you end up going through all the other troubles. But let me re note that if you wait until the hard drive dies you WILL NOT be able to access those files without going through some company that charges $200+ dollars. The clicking you hear is a sign of a head unit failure which is sadly not DIY repairable and if it fully dies than it will require expert help to salvage the data.

Feel free to ask any kind of questions, It's pretty late and this page may not be as coherent as I think it is.

Side note, this type of failure is most commonly caused by moving the laptop while it's on. So if you find your self leaving your laptop on when you put it in your backpack or even just moving it from a desk to a couch often while it is not a good habit (I have killed many hard drives this way).

 

[Brennen1350]

Your hard drive has the click of death, it is diying. The click will come and go until it completely dies.

I also don't know why I asked you to run a disk check because your hard drive disk is probably fine, what's diying is your head unit.

 

[KyleRD]

TL DR your looking at a minimum price of $60 dollars and probably a good 5 to 10 hours of work.

Bad news, yes your hard drive is failing

Good news, You might have a month or 3 (possibly longer, possibly shorter) before it completely goes
You can run a disk check to confirm this, (this takes anywhere between 5 hours to 24 hours)
(I have refused to "upgrade" to windows 8 so I will post a link of someone else explaining how)
http://http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disk-error-checking-windows-8

Your only solution really is to buy a new hard drive and transfer the data over.

Step 1:
Find your replacement hard drive, make sure it is a 2.5" drive (3.5" is for desktops)
I suggest sites like new egg or tiger direct and prices will vary anywhere from $60 - $150 ($600 for a SSD)
cheap: $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149377
reliable: $90
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W01AZ4555
You might want to look yourself, flash sales come and go and you might be able to find more reliable gear cheaper.

Step 2:
Backing up if possible, now while you wait for the drive to ship if you get a chance try to back up your most important data. I don't know about your school but mine has it's own server that allots each of it's students a certain amount of memory. If your school doesn't have this then you might want to back up your files on a cloud service like dropbox or googles new cloud system. Of course you can't back up your whole system to these but you should be able to get the important stuff.

Step 3:
More bad news, your going to need to obtain a new operating system and drivers to go with your hard drive. If your computer came with your operating systems instillation disk than this will be piss easy. If it didn't than this will be very difficult.

Step 4:
Replacing laptop hard drive is actually extremely easy. Don't worry you won't damage anything by taking the screws out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4TvcBp1u8 Here is a youtube video of a guy installing a new hard drive into the same model.

Step 5
Insert your Operating System CD's into your drive bay, it will ask how to install them and is pretty user friendly. Then insert your systems drivers CD's and install all the drivers.

Step 6
Transferring your files over from your old hard drive to your new one is going to be a little bit of a challenge that I will edit in later if you end up going through all the other troubles. But let me re note that if you wait until the hard drive dies you WILL NOT be able to access those files without going through some company that charges $200+ dollars. The clicking you hear is a sign of a head unit failure which is sadly not DIY repairable and if it fully dies than it will require expert help to salvage the data.

Feel free to ask any kind of questions, It's pretty late and this page may not be as coherent as I think it is.

Side note, this type of failure is most commonly caused by moving the laptop while it's on. So if you find your self leaving your laptop on when you put it in your backpack or even just moving it from a desk to a couch often while it is not a good habit (I have killed many hard drives this way).

First off, sorry for taking so long to reply, and thank you for your replies.

I am most likely just going to wait until it dies to get something new. I don't really have the money to do anything at the moment, but I did get all of my important stuff off the laptop and onto a flash drive. Turns out the the 700 GB that I've used of my hard drive is mostly just Steam games which can just be redownloaded onto another hard drive haha, and I don't really have anything on here that I need for school, save for some pdf textbooks that I already copied onto my flash drives.

I don't believe that I have the CD for Windows 8, so that may prove to be a problem if/when my drive does indeed go out. I will take another look at your advice for that later so.

And I wouldn't really say my hard drive is clicking at all. I'm crossing my fingers that I'm just being paranoid because the sound may or may not have been there all along... It just sounds like the normal sound hard drives make when they are reading stuff, like a faint scratching. Anyways, thank you again for your advice. It will definitely prove helpful if/when my drive goes out.

Regards,

Kyle