Solved Dead hard drive?

[Smurfyy]

Hey guys, recently I repaired a computer for a mate of my dads.
I replaced the hard drive as the old one is "dead".
The hard drive is a Samsung HD501LJ, it had Win Vista Premium installed, it was supplied with a Dell pre-built machine, not sure on the model number.

So the thing is, the hard drive is "dead".
When I plug it into my external SATA Dock it sounds like it's spinning up, then like it's reading, then it just starts to click every second or so. Windows recognises the device, but says it needs to format it before it can be used, it done this twice out of the five times I've plugged it in.

Is there any way I can get the data from the drive? It's not mine, but there's a lot of files and pictures in there as the friend is a photographer.

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks guys

EDIT--
It seems the drive has 2 partitions, the recovery partition just popped up, it's showing that it's 10GB, the whole drive size is 500GB.

 

[richc46]

This is the best that I know to get stuff from a dying HD.
PC Inspector - kostenlose Software für die Datenrettung von CONVAR - Die Datenretter.

 

[Lottiemansion]

Hi,

Well, from that information I would say that the drive is "not quite dead" but it's definately going!

How much time do you get before it is "Unusable"?
Have you managed to read any files or information from it?

I would suggest you try this software & see if you get any information from the disk: -

Free Download Magic Partition Manager freeware: EASEUS Partition Manager, Disk & Partition Copy and Partition Recovery Software.

 

[Smurfyy]

Thanks Rich, will give it a try

As I'm typing this an autoplay box has just popped up telling me it's found another hard drive. Maybe it's not dead? Or this is it's final 'push' before it does die? lol

 

[MrNeeds]

If it's clicking and allowing access, then it's probably just a rusty arm reader, believe it or not, the best way to fix it involves a hammer ;-)

 

[Smurfyy]

Lottiemansion, I must have been posting my reply at the same time you did, and therefore didn't see your reply.
So far I've managed to get most of the files from the drive, all I've done is just opened the drive, which is E: in this case, and copied everything, including the windows files, to my external drive, which is I:.
It seems to have worked, am posting from my netbook at the moment so can't verify that it has copied them all.

 

[Smurfyy]

Looks like I've managed to get everything from it.
The hard drive also seems to be working perfectly, so maybe I'll be able to just put it back into the machine and it'll work.

Thanks for the suggestions guys

Solved!