BSOD 0x000000ED

The last few days I kept getting "blue screens of death" with different STOP codes while working on my computer. Now my computer can't even boot anymore: when it tries to load Windows the blue screen appears with the following code:
0x000000ED (0x872BFE30, 0XC0000185, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I've already tried the following things:
- Boot into safe mode --> blue screen
- Ran checkdisk from 2 different Windows CD's --> when I choose "r" for repair the setup hangs after a few seconds. The harddisk makes a "ticking" sound
- Ran Dell Hard Drive Diagnostics --> Fail. Return Code: 4
- replaced the SATA cable with a new one --> no effect..

My system:
Dell Dimension 5000
Pentium 4 - 3,2 Ghz
1024 MB Ram
Harddisk: Western Digital Caviar WD2500KS-00MJB0 (250 GB)
OS: Windows XP

Can someone help me with this problem?.

 

In zip drives this was known as the click of death.

STOP Error 0x000000ED: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
STOP error 0xED means that the I/O subsystem attempted to mount the boot volume and it failed. STOP code 0x000000ED may also display "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" on the same STOP message.

For this I found

From all signs, it looks like you had a dying and now dead hard drive.
If it is still under warranty, contact Dell.

I was hoping to find a listing from Dell with all the error codes but so far I've come up empty.

 

yep sounds like that hard-drive is dead

 

Thanks for your help.

I connected the disk to my laptop (SATA to USB cable) today and it started to make that ticking sound again, so it must be dead.

I tried to recover some data using recovery software but it failed. Last option is the "freezing method". Western Digital offers a product replacement service so I contacted them. Do you think Western Digital will see any damage to my harddisk after I tried the freezing trick?

Only one question remains: what can I do to prevent my new hard disk from crashing? This is my second dead hard disk in 3 years, the last one was only a few months old. What am I doing wrong? Or is it just bad luck?

 

It's the luck of the draw. Some companies have a run of bad drives in certain years, other times the drives work perfectly for years.

I store very little in the way of important files on my hard drives, simply because I expect them to fail. Anything worth keeping should be burned to a CD or DVD. I also image my hd about once a month so if windows doesn't start, I load the image and only have updates to things like AV and windows to grab.