Hard Drive Question

[richardf77]

Can someone resolve something that's been bugging me for a while.

A couple of years ago I replaced a laptop HDD that was apparently failing - it would no longer boot. Thing is I placed it in an enclosure to recover data and it worked fine, so much so I have since formatted it to use as an external drive.

Don't understand why a drive would stop working inside a PC but appears to work fine once out of it and no longer running windows. There is nothing wrong with the machine, it is still working fine with a replacement hdd and Windows - even been upgraded to 10 and works as well as it ever did.

I am confused, can anyone offer an explanation?

[Geek-9pm]

Here is a short answer. The hard drive industry is the backbone of modern computing.  A hard drive offers economical storage space. But with limitations. One is spied. It is very slow compared to the CPU and memory. 

Another issue is reliability. The hard drive has to compensate for failures that happen. Whenever you format hard drive the internal firmware makes needed corrections to the drive map. This means that bad spots on the disc are masked and are no longer available to the system.

So when you formatted the hard drive, you 'fixed' it in manner of speaking.
Sorry, I do not have a reference. Years ago I worked in Silicon valley and I was in the Hard Drive research portion of a major company. Some work we did was with Stuttgart, who later founded Segregate. Even back then hard drives had a self healing feature. Whiteout that, they would have been useless.

[Allan]

Apparently it wasn't "failing" in the first place.

[patio]

Connections.  That's all...

[richardf77]

Hmm, i have wondered whether that was the case. Either that it was a software issue. The drive stopped booting, thats why i thought it had failed. That and the fact it had been making  clicking noises for ages beforehand!

thanks for replies.

[Allan]

Well, clicking noises do typically indicate a failing drive. Partial information doesn't help us help you

[Salmon Trout]

Stuttgart, who later founded Segregate.

I thought of half a dozen funny things to say about that, and decided not to post any of them. Shugart and Seagate.

[Geek-9pm]

I thought of half a dozen funny things to say about that, and decided not to post any of them. Shugart and Seagate.

Hope you had a good laugh.   
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Shugart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate_Technology

Seagate Technology (then called Shugart Technology) was incorporated on November 1, 1978 and commenced operations with co-founders Al Shugart, Tom Mitchell, Doug Mahon, Finis Conner and Syed Iftikar in October 1979.[4] The company came into being when Conner approached Shugart with the idea of starting a new company to develop 5.25-inch HDDs which Conner predicted would be a coming economic boom in the disk drive market.[5] The name was changed to Seagate Technology to avoid a lawsuit from Xerox's subsidiary Shugart Associates (also founded by Shugart).[6]