My Hard Drive Is Click click clicking! Help what is wrong?
Our faithful reader Michael writes in from New Jersey:
HELP!
My hard drive (my largest storage drive h:\) just started to make these light intermittent clicking noises. Sometimes the drive does not show up in bios nor in My Computer. Then it magically reappears after a few restarts – but its getting louder and now there is another click. So its like click – click – LOUD CLICK – whirllllll. What should I do Backup? Ghost? Raid? I have somewhat of a budget and I’m home sick today! HELP! Did I Say HELP!
Normally a clicking sound coming from your machine is a Very Bad thing.
It is probably a precursor to full out drive failure, so my immediate advice is “BACKUP WHAT EVER DATA IS ON THAT DRIVE!” ASAP! Any way you can, as quick as you can! Copy the contents to another drive burn dvd’s, cd’s, zip disks whatever it takes. You need to realize that after another restart the drive COULD never spin up again! If the drive really fails, you’re out of luck – unless you have a BIG budget to do data recovery.
BUT Seeming your an ATA reader chances are you have a full backup already (hopefully) and then you can continue on to see if we can get you fixed up.
Alright so you feel confident about your full backup and all your data is safe now lets try the following steps to see if the problems with the drive are reversable.
On XP, you can check run a hard drive error check by executing Microsofts CHKDSK utility. Restart your computer and tapping the F8 function key while it’s booting up. When you see the option list choose Safe Mode, and continue. Click the Start button, then click Run, then type CHKDSK C: /F /R in the run box and then press Enter. The /R option tells CHKDSK to scan for bad disk sectors, and the /F option means to fix any errors found.
If CHKDSK offers to recover lost data, “convert lost chains to files”,, or fix something else, you should let it do its thing. After CHKDSK finishes, restart your computer normally and see if the dreaded click of doom is gone. If not, the drive is most likely damaged, and should be replaced as soon as possible.
I Know It Sounds Weird But – Is Your Hard Drive On The Level?
This blew my mind and definitely worth the read – But before you trash your troublesome drive, you should try one more thing… Some (older) hard drives are very sensitive to non-level surfaces, and will not function properly if they’re sitting on a slant. Shut down your computer, make sure your system unit is on a flat surface (use a level to make sure), and then restart. I was all set to give up on an old server that was doing its click-click-whirl routines, but the drive had come loose inside the machine and was no longer on a level surface. The missing screw was replaced some dust was blown off using a can of clean air and the problem was gone!
That clicking sound MAY signal impending hard drive failure, but keep in mind you don’t always get such a warning. So play it safe…BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP! Did i Say Back Up?
By the way that is a stock photo and no actually hard drives were hurt in creating this post – Mike get back @ us and let us know how it went!
August 21, 2007 - 3:18 pm
The clicking sound you hear is the hammer of the gun that is going to destroy your hard drive being cocked into firing position.
The only catch is, you have no idea when the gun will fire.
Back up, back up, back up!!!
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August 21, 2007 - 3:30 pm
Say I dont have a backup what are my options for recovery? what is a clean room? i heard i can get another similar drive and swap out the guts. how hard is this. can i do it with normal tools. seeming i cant get to the data now how could i make it any worse, are there websites or places that do this?
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August 21, 2007 - 3:50 pm
Clean rooms are hermetically sealed rooms where you can work on things like drives without contaminants and foreign materials to destroy the components.
If you’ve got the means to create a clean room which I am sure are quite $$$$, by all means.
Or you can pay for a recovery service, which can get cost prohibitive. I used Drive Savers recently and they were great despite not being able to recover the drive. They didn’t charge me a penny for the discovery of the device.
But if you can slave the drive you can pull most if not all the data off of it.
Also mentioned in the post is an alternative method I was able to devise that worked on a drive that would not mount properly.
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August 21, 2007 - 4:06 pm
@Panickedchris – SlothMan got it right. Using them fancy smancy admin terms it means a box to work in that no crud can get into the drive.
I have tried to do exactly what you want to to dude and failed miserably leaving 2 drives VERY dead.
Its also not SIMILAR drives but IDENTICAL drives down to size revision and date – you have to swap physical parts out that you shouldnt be touching with your hands in the first place.
We had a pile of metal and mangnets when were finished, If you value your data take it to an expert (if you can afford it) or if not connect her up using a ide to usb controller boot into knoppix with it connected, make it a slave – whatever just try to copy your data off before it just dies…
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August 25, 2007 - 11:55 pm
@panickedchris:
One site’s server died and the local “tech” had been mindlessly swapping [bad] tapes for ages.
$1400+ later and only some data was recovered from the server drive and delivered as a batch of DVD’s. This was work done be a professional recovery company that knows what they are doing.
Having said that, I tried the steps in this article: My Hard Drive Died! at http://www.myharddrivedied.com/
Click on the Presentations link.
I had two identical models, a clicker and a good drive, so I figured, “What the Hell “, right?. I did the controller card swap, then later tried even swapping the internal components. When I was done, I had two identical-dead-drives.
If you have any professional means to back the thing up, do so.
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August 26, 2007 - 3:03 pm
If you don’t have a good backup and your data is important, I would definitely NOT try to make my own clean room and repair the drive myself. Data recovery companies have all the facilities, hardware, software and expertise to do the job properly. If you try to do it yourself the most likely result is making it worse and making it more expensive when you send it off.
Data recovery is expensive, but if the data is that critical you will need to pay to have it recovered. Think of it as an expensive lesson in why you should always back up.
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October 16, 2008 - 2:10 pm
If you need the data on the drive, I would recommend a program written by Steve Gibson of GRC.com called SpinRite. SpinRite.info has a lot of testimonials & I can say for my self it has saved many of my hard drives & my clients’ hard drives, the latter of which rarely have their data backed up.
Definitely one of the best $89.00 I’ve ever spent on a piece of software.
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October 22, 2008 - 7:51 pm
Tosh,who is 6yrs old,was an inveterate Clicker on xp.
[even though all of BlackViper's suggestions disabling services.msc were executed(sic)]
Enter Ubuntu,& for the past two years the HD has been well-behaved,nay Silent.
Go figure
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October 23, 2008 - 2:49 pm
Did you try connect it to another PC?
Spinrite won’t help with clicking drives. It’s only useful to revive bad sectors.
PS: Just came across this page with lots of funny sounds hard drives make: http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
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