Hard drive click noise-wont boot

[HANDLER]

Hello all.I new to this site so any help would be greatly appreciated.Problem-I start my mac and the OS screen comes up and stops booting,drive starts making clicking noise and will not finish loading.I thought the drive was done but,what is weird is that i boot from cd and can access the drive.All files show up like normal.Have not lost anything yet.So i reboot and samething happens ,Os screens pops (OS 9.2)up and thats it ,will not finish booting.If drive is done I'll just get a new one but if there is something that can be done before i get a new one I would like to know. THANKS IN ADVANCE


P.S. It clicks 3 times and spins and then all over again 3 clicks and spin.

[Sun Baked]

Maxtor Drive?

If it is you might want to replace it, they usually start making this noise before they die.

Of course it could always be a software problem causing the drive to make the same sound as the hardware problem.

You could always run Disk First Aid, rebuild the desktop, run Norton and defragment the drive.

But you'd probably want to copy the contents off the drive before running Norton or defragging the drive.

WARNING - Don't let Norton run the file check and/or try to repair any files (it has a habit of messing up files).

[HANDLER]

Its a IBM Deskstar...I tried Disk First Aid and everything came back fine.Can i copy items from that drive to another drive while booted by cd?

[Sun Baked]

Depends on the boot CD, as long as you get Finder access you should be able to copy the stuff.

Remember Disk First Aid doesn't catch everything, there could still be some boot block and catalog problems that are crashing the boot process.

And it is OS 9, so the extension conflicts and messed up pref files are always a possibility. Though you've probably already tried to boot with all extensions off and rebuilt the desktop by now.

[stoid]

sounds like the "click-of-death"

get all important files off of the drive ASAP

zero the drive, or if possible, get a new HD

[gwuMACaddict]

Originally posted by stoid
sounds like the "click-of-death"


my ipod died in much the same fashion... but i guess that isn't what you wanted to hear. sorry bud

[scmacdaddy]

Originally posted by stoid

zero the drive, or if possible, get a new HD

what does it mean to zero the drive
?

[Versello]

Originally posted by scmacdaddy
what does it mean to zero the drive
?

Basically it's just another name for a low-level format (different from the normal format), whereas each sector gets a binary 0 filled-in, thus destroying all data for good.

Since you have an IBM Deskstar (aka Deathstar), a low-level format won't do you any justice (I've tried it before). IBM Deskstars are extremely notorious to failing (sometimes a week after use). I've owned 4 and they have all failed (sometimes replacements failed after a month).

BUT, do not despair mon ami! IBM has released a fix for their Deskstar drives. Go to: http://www.storagereview.com/php/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=DeathStar for more information and how to get the fix.

Unfortunately the firmware update works from a PC and not a Mac. I reccomend you backup all your data, transfer your HD to a PC and run the firmware update - then put your HD back into your Mac.

[HANDLER]

I would Like to Thank All that offered me help.So u know,it must have been a bad sector on the drive where the OS resides.I reinitialized the drive and reinstalled the OS and all is fine.It booted with no problem.I am still going to get a new drive because now I am a lilttle scared that it may go out again...
So to all that gave me good things to try,I thank You