I think my hard drive is dying

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CGH

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And I did not back up my pictures, video and audio files. :(

Yesterday morning I booted up my pc, I noticed something strange when I received a message saying Windows genuine advantage failed to load later the computer froze up and I got the blue screen of death. I tried to start it up several times but I got different error messages. Sometimes it tells me there is no hard drive detected or it freezes up on the Windows XP screen and then goes to a black screen with two option press F1 or F2 no drive detected. If I let the pc rest for a bit sometimes I can get it to start up but it freezes up after a very short time. I tried to run the Windows disk check but it could not finish I got the blue screen of death around step 4. I hear a clicking sound when the pc freezes up.

Is there a way I can save my data? It is a 40 gb IDE hard drive to me it is not worth it to pay a lot of money to a data recovery service. If possible I would like to save the data myself.
 
[quote name='Liquid 2']Get a linux live CD and external HDD.[/QUOTE]

Yes...

If the drive won't run/boot reliably, you'll have to either use a live CD like this poster says (ubuntu is one), or you will have to mount this drive on some other PC as a slave drive either internally or externally (by using a USB enclosure/adapter.

If you are still having trouble accessing the drive, this program might help you to get your pictures back:

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/smart_recovery/download.htm?language=1

Note that this program uses knowledge about picture file formats to improve it's recovery abilities. The downside is that it only works for image files. The same company makes a more general recovery program as well.
 
Sounds like the motor or the read/write arm is failing, with the clicking sounds and whatnot...

If you're going to use a live linux CD, there are specialized distributions you could look into for this particular problem.

First, try if you could Clone that hard drive into another one using Clonezilla. It works like Norton Ghost in that it tries to make a byte-for-byte copy of your harddrive into another. You could try to ghost the failing hard drive, and have all that data safe within another working drive. May require you getting another hard drive to dump all your files into.

The second option is using The System Rescue CD. Personally, I find that it's a bit more robust and complicated to use than Clonezilla, but it has specialized tools and programs that allows you to get into the nitty gritty bits of your system, that could potentially do a lot of good, or make the situation a lot worse. It could tell you why your hard drive is failing, and if you could do anything about it (and from your symptoms, your kinda SOL). If you choose this route, I highly suggest reading the how-to guides in the site. I myself is kinda intimidated by this, and since it's been a while since I needed to use something like this (knock on wood), I'm not really that well-versed with this version.
 
Thank you for all the replies and help. I felt the easiest way to do it would be to buy a usb flash drive so I gave it a shot. Today I bought a 4 gb USB flash drive from Best Buy geek squad brand when I returned home I turned on my pc for the first time since Saturday morning and luckily for me it stayed on long enough for me to transfer most of my files to another pc. It shut down again a short while ago I could hear when the drive stopped working my pc then froze up and I received another bsod. I will attempt to recover the final five files I want from the old drive in a day or two.

One thing I noticed is the video files I transferred from my old drive to a newer pc are not playing correctly. WMP starts up and I can hear the audio fine but I do not get a picture. Why is that happening?
 
[quote name='CGH']One thing I noticed is the video files I transferred from my old drive to a newer pc are not playing correctly. WMP starts up and I can hear the audio fine but I do not get a picture. Why is that happening?[/QUOTE]

You're missing a Codec to play the video .
 
For under $20 you can get a cable that connects almost any ATA drive ever made, parallel or serial, via USB. It's like an enclosure without the shell and extremely handy for dealing with drives that can still be read but will no longer serve as a boot volume.

Since I do this stuff a lot for other people it's essential business gear but the price is low enough to make it worthwhile for more casual needs, too. If you have to deal with raw drives more than three times a year, it's well worth the purchase.
 
Thanks again for all the help and advice.

Two days ago I purchased a WD6400AAKS sata drive on dell's website. I used Windows file transfer wizard to save my settings and files from my old failing hard drive to my usb drive. About the only files I could not save from my old drive are my desktop files whenever I try to transfer them to my usb drive using the windows transfer wizard my drive fails halfway through the process.:(

I had paid licenses to AVG 8.0 and Winrar on my old drive I am crossing my fingers that those paid licenses transfer to my new hard drive.
 
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...&cs=19&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=39715&lid=1003762

Yesterday I received my WD6400AAKS hard drive from Dell I opened the box expecting a new retail package with drive, cables, driver disc etc but all I received is the hard drive. I am not happy about it nothing on Dell's website indicates the hard drive is OEM. I feel deceived. I had to order a Sata cable and a IDE to Sata Y splitter power cable on Ebay. I have to wait another week and a half to two weeks to see if this thing works.
 
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[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']That's super mega lame.[/QUOTE]


It is. They ripped me off on shipping too $8.99 to ship an OEM hard drive. I might return it but I have to pay return shipping and Dell's invoice states they can charge a restocking fee of up to 15% if I return the drive and there is nothing wrong with it and it is not their error and they deduct the shipping fee I paid. I never thought this would happen when I placed my order on Dell's website.
 
Thanks to a couple of terrific Ebay sellers that shipped my sata and ide to sata power cables asap awesome prices too I was able to install my new hard drive yesterday. My pc is up and running again. So far so good great drive I cannot hear it at all and when I check the drive space and see 591 gb free space it brings a smile to my face. I went from a 40 gb ide hard drive to 590 gb sata hard drive. :) A good USB flash drive is a must have I was having some trouble after I installed my new hard drive my ethernet, audio and video drivers were not loading up automatically so I downloaded the drivers off Dell's website on another pc, put them on my USB flash drive and uploaded them to my pc problem solved. That is one lesson I have learned from this experience.
 
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