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My desktop computer won't boot: the drive makes three clicking noises, then the monitor displays "OS not loaded". It's a Western Digital Caviar SE16, 500MB. It's still under warranty, so I can probably get it replaced, but I guess I'll have to take/send it to a data recovery service first. Yes, I don't do backups—I've never had a drive fail before, so I never put much thought into it. I'm still holding out hope that there's a way to get the drive to boot again. It's not like it got hit by lightning or anything, it just stopped booting.
Anybody have advice, for fixing it and/or data recovery? Is there any place locally (Boston area) that will do data recovery (preferably without voiding the warranty), or am I going to have to send it away? How does it work, do you have to give them a new drive to copy onto, or do they just write to a stack of DVD-RWs or something? Can they copy the whole drive (or whatever parts of it can be salvaged, if there's actual platter damage), or do I have to tell them specific directories that I need?
Anybody have advice, for fixing it and/or data recovery? Is there any place locally (Boston area) that will do data recovery (preferably without voiding the warranty), or am I going to have to send it away? How does it work, do you have to give them a new drive to copy onto, or do they just write to a stack of DVD-RWs or something? Can they copy the whole drive (or whatever parts of it can be salvaged, if there's actual platter damage), or do I have to tell them specific directories that I need?