www.deadharddrive.com

[okaminagi]

ive had this comstar external hard drive for over 6 months now and ive almost filled the aprox 230 GBs (probably 200 GBs of it) and ive recently been doing some stupid things with it (i realise now that I was being dumb and thats why I'm here now, I decided to find some help).

I was continuing to use it despite realising one day that the thing was making a clicking sound every few seconds. I thought it would go away, but after a few days I realised it was a problem. It was also getting a lot more hot than usual (before it was about 1st degree burn kind of hot, now it's about 3rd degree...). since the clicking started ive been using it for nearly a month. I thought that i could handle the problem and that it was probably because I was using it so often, so I used it less and turned it off more.

Then It started to effect Windows. I mean, whenever it was on, sometimes Windows would be stuck on one screen (like "starting up" or "shutting down") and explorer would freeze up a lot. I had to get my that by switching off the external HDD (that's right, without "safely removing" it... i had no choice) and sure enough windows continued normaly as soon as i flicked the switch. Ive had to do this a couple of times now.

Then one day, finaly, i could no longer access the external hard drive, which happened 2 days ago. Today I realised that this clicking was more serious than I thought and now im just going to leave it off untill im sure I can do something to fix the problem.

It still turns on, and im sure it's still working (it still makes the regular sounds it always did). It's just the clicking and the heat (i realise that the ventilation in my room is just horrible for not only my external hard drive, but my whole computer. it's become the hottest room in the house by far). My Computer can still sometimes recognize the drive name (K:\) and it freezes up when I try to access it, but most of the time Windows just freezes up when I double-click on My Computer.


well, thats my story but here is the question (or questions):

Is it dead?! Can someone please tell me if there is something i can do and what exactly that might be?? What exactly is making it click? Is it effecting the disk?

my only fear is that it is corrupted... i cannot risk loosing any files.

thanks in advance

[I didnt know exactly where to post this here because there doesnt exactly seem to be a "help" forum here]