I did the same my drive still flickers i can hear the arm moving but not reading. i need to open the hd casing any suggestions how to get it read?

HI,

There are a number of reasons this could be the case.
I am going to assume that the drive has power!? You can open and close the drive!? I am also going to assume that you can hear the drive running and you can see the green light flickering?

* is it just a single ROM that it wont read... but it will read everything else? Or will it not read any Disc?

Are you trying to read a normal DVD/CD Disc? Some drives will not read a burned disc, even when it was the same drive that burned it!
I wouldn't believe that either, except that I saw it with my own eyes just last week!

Sometimes it is just a loose cable inside the case. Simply removing the cover and reseating the cables to the drive and the motherboard will sometimes fix the issue. *be careful or get someone who knows what they are doing to do this!!!

Baring all that, it is of course possible that the drive has just burned out and is no longer capable of reading discs.

I would suggest that you run a scan on your HD using Windows' builtin chkdsk utility.

Start a DOS command prompt (depending on your OS version you may need to run it as administrator)

Type in chkdsk /F /R

More than likely your HD is having some bad sectors which will cause a delay in the read and seek time. I would suggest backing up your data in case this drive should fail completely which it will should any bad sectors are found by chkdsk.

If you think of a hard drive as an old phonograph/record player it makes this easier to understand (assuming you are old enough to have seen a record player..SMILE) The data is stored on platters or circular metalic disks that spin at 5400 or 7200 revolutions per minute. A "Head" or needle like arm extends from the corner of the drive and actually reads and rights data to those platters. When the arm motor goes bad the "HEAD ARM" typically will chatter against the HD case as the head doesnt stop where it should and hits the case. If your hard drive is still functional I would suggest backing up your data as this chattering always indicates an impending failure of that drive. If the chattering is happening and the drive is not being read then the motor has gone bad on teh arm already and its a goner. If the data has SIGNIFICANT value the platters can be remounted by a professional company and data retrieved but that service usually starts at about $1000 dollars and is usally used only by companies to recover data for business reasons.

Disassemble the case, and remove the disk-drive.
Attach it as a "slave" disk-drive in some desktop computer, and see if the desktop computer can "detect" the disk-drive, and if the files on the disk-drive are still accessible.

The arm that moves the heads over the platters inside your drive is loose. That means your drive is mostly toast. Read this link that I wrote on hard drive failures. It also has a way you can possibly recover a few files.

http://www.fixya.com/support/r3584465-bad_hard_drives_and_data_recovery

I'm sorry to inform you that the hard drive already gone bad. Clicking sound is an indication of bad hard drive.

Check with some computer stores to see if they could offer a data recovery service so that you could still retrieve the files in that HD.

Have a great day!

It sounds like a problem with the board inside the case,- the actual hard drive is probably OK. Opening the case will void any warranty but there may not be much left anyway. There should be 4 screws in the bottom of the drive,- front 2 may be hidden under a sticker. Try installing the drive in your new case or an empty drive bay inside your computer. I have had external hard drive cases fail before and the actual hard drive was ok.

hi,
you have definitely got a dead HD (hard-drive) there, nothing you can do about it.
sounds like the force of the shock has damaged the HD beyond repair.
HD work by i high precision arm that reads data on a spinning platter, the chances are you have damaged the arm and the click is where the arm is trying to read the HD with no luck

sorry

replace the DVD/CD drive. Reasonable costs if you look online.

There is an arm in a harddisk that holds the read-write heads. This arm can move the heads to tracks near the hub or near the edge of the disk. A normal hard disk is 5 inches (12.5 cm) or so in diameter. This arm, therefore, can move about 2 inches (5 cm) across the face of the disk. The speed at which this arm can move is astonishing. The arm is very light, and its actuator is powerful and precise. The arm can slide across the face of the disk hundreds of times per second if it needs to.
As the hard-disk arm moves back and forth rapidly, it sets up vibrations that our ears hear as sounds.