my nikimi 60gb hard drive (primary master) keeps making stange clicking noises that sounds like a sprung plastic lever clicking.

the amount of clicks are random, ranging from one to five or more and the timing of the clicks are also random, not in sync with any compter activity, though it does appear to affect performance when it happens for longer periods.

could it be an indication of a damaged hdd?
could it have anything to do with the hdd getting very hot?

usually clicking means dying. Ibm's are known for this.

What the hell is nikimi for a brand ?

We've all been there. I once had a drive branded Excelstor.

Yeah my first IBM drive died 2 days after it started clicking =\ My 2nd IBM drive started clicking too, and I quickly backed up everything, but it still works, just freezes and clicks when I access certain files. I actually got as far as isolating that section of the drive that has problems with PartitionMagic, and now the drive works, just missing those ~500mb that's screwed up. I can probably get more outta that 500mb, but I'm quite happy already, I just use the HD to do backup and scratch disk/temp files now.

I'd recommend you to send it to IBM a.s.a.p., as the chance there's still warranty on the drive is quite big.

What kind of drive are we talking about here? Is it a laptop drive (2,5"), or a standard harddisk?

Or you can do as I did, hit the drive really hard a couple of times... It's been working flawlessly since

I have a WD DD40 that does this too, I unplugged it and it stopped.

IBM sold their HD division to Hitachi. To see if your HD is still under warranty, get the serial # off the HD sticker and enter it here.

Have had only 2 IBM 75GXP HDs fail on me. The first is DOA, the second I returned after it died 4 months down the road. Got no prob w/ my current 3 IBMS though. Knock on wood baby.

clickings got worse!!

drive clicking more often and for longer, constantly slowing down the computer every time it clicks, until i eventually get to the blue screen of death with a "disk/write error".
It then freezes and when i restart, i get a "boot failure".
i turn the computer off and when i turn it back on, it starts up in scandisk, but stops due to a "data error while reading the FAT on drive C:"
I thought of doing a surface scan but i don't think that it would ever finish!

how did you know which part of your drive was damaged?:

i think the damaged part of my hard drive is where windows is installed, lets' just hope that my drive lasts longer than 2 days!

I found that spunking on the processor cooled it down a bit

It's already too late to copy the drive, if I were you I'd back up everything I can and turn the thing off till you get another.

helo i bort two different ram sticks and was wondering if dey are able to work togever
one ram is pc2700(333) and one ram is pc2100 (266)
they are bothh ddr
they are going to be put into an epox 8rda motherboard!
please answer, i need a lot of help!?!

Yes, you do.

LMAO that was funny

You'll find out if they'll work together when you install them, not every RAM likes other RAM, and remeber you'll only be able to run them at 266.

Hows the HDD?

Going a little OT aren't we?

They sure are... and that's not what this forum is intended for!

@hornster:

1. about the RAM: you'd may want to open up a new thread (after searching around a little, as I am pretty sure that this question has been asked numerous times before)

2. about the harddisk: you can still recover the disk partially! If you'd use Norton Ghost to make a copy of the disk, and set it to ignore all faulty sectors, you can probably save most of your data (chances are big you have to reinstall the system, but that's better than loosing all data!).
For the error option, check the possible arguments of the dos tool (you need to start your system from a disk, and run ghost from a disk as well)!

Hey stoner.. thx for the link.. I just checked the drive that had the problem(it is a 75GXP drive), took down the S/N, and the page said the expiration date is 2003-12-30 ! So does that mean I CAN return it and get a new drive?? How do I do that?

Also, the drive was OEM when I bought it(I think all IBM drives are OEM anyway, just wanted to make sure), would there be any problems with this?

Not al all, you can return your drive. All you need to do, is go through the RMA procedure on the website (every action you have to take will be explained there).

Ok thx.. I'll try that..

I knew because everytime I accessed a certain file(in my case, it was the 300mb America's Army Zip), the HD would click non-stop and the computer would freeze.. So.. I moved the files on the same partition off the drive(luckily, there was no clicking for those files, meaning no problems for them).. Then I used Partition Magic and just slowly chopped up the partition into smaller pieces, finding out which were the problematic ones. I combined the ones without problems, and the ones with. And now I'm left with ~500mb of space I won't use.