think my motherboard needs replacing

[dtm1985]

Hi

 

First off I do have some pc knowledge but Im certainly no expert.

A few months ago I had big prob with my pc, basically wouldnt boot up and was getting error messages. I sent it away to be fixed. The guy had to reinstall windows and do a full data recovery on my main hardrive.

When he brought it back he warned me that my mother board was on its last legs and would prob keep over heating. A few days ago my pc was running fine but i accidently left it on overnight, when I got up i restarted pc and just wouldn't load. I booted from disc then did repair which worked but a day later it happened again so i tried the same thing but this time it wouldnt work and my tower was making a quiet, soft, intemitant ticking sound (apologies for the slightly odd description) I also noticed that when i had to select drive to be repaired that my hard drive was not listed so i searched for it and my main hard drive was listed as having 99gb capacity when its meant to and always has had 350gb.

Is all lost have i totally fried my pc or can it be saved? I really need to atleast save the hard drive as i have a lot of very important (not backed up) files on there.

Thanks

[Jelly Bean]

Hello and welcome.....My first thought is your hard drive is failing or failed....

 

Then I would sugest testing the system with a new power supply to rule failed PSU.....

[KenB]

If I can but in ???

 

a quiet, soft, intemitant ticking sound

This could be the beginning of the end for your hard drive.

 

Take a look here:

 

I would be inclined to put your drive on another system and try to access the files etc before you do anything else.

The clicking could be due to the surface of the drive breaking down and not able to be read.

It could be that the sector that contains the boot information cannot be read.

The drive may be accessable from another system.

 

The more you try to access it - the less chance you have of getting any data off it.

(assuming the clicking is coming from the drive)

[dtm1985]

thanks for your reply. i had a look at the video you posted and it really does sound the same as my ticking sound!!!! I am now really worried that my data is going to be lost forever!! I had tried a couple of times to repair from disc so hope this hasnt damaged the drive beyond repair. Will send it to specialist to try and get it recovered.

[KenB]

Will send it to specialist to try and get it recovered.

This is VERY expensive.

 

You could try connecting it to another machine and see if you can access the drive before you take any drastic action.

We can explain if necessary.

[Moo]

well the drive is still functioning physically so id consider yourself lucky because its only a matter of time before the heads crash consider yourself even luckier if you have enough time to make a backup of your data you will have a much better chance of succeeding if you do this from a live linux cd ubuntu for instance http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download rather then windows. Keep in mind its only a matter of time, before the heads crash which are responsible for reading and writing your data and you will need the whole head assembly replaced, depending on how much data you have you may be much better off doing a bitstream image of your hard drive, rather than just trying to copy whatever it is directly onto a backup drive. This will make the drive seek all over the place at lightning speed, whereas a bitstream recovery will slowly move the actuator arm which the head is attached to from one end of the platter to the other and skip if a sector is bad then try to slowly read it backwards. Data recovery as Ken mentioned is very expensive so if your drive completely fails and you cant afford to get recovered professionally, you might like to try the old pop it in a antistatic bag and ziplock bag then stick in the freezer overnight trick to get 1 LAST CHANCE.