*Click*...*Click*...*Click* sound coming from hard drive

[GenBanks]

I'm getting a regular clicking sound coming from my hard drive. It started quite recently. The first time I noticed it was when I was joining a CS:S server and it hung up on the loading and just kept clicking. Today and last night, I was randomly getting an rythmical clicking sound; not all the time, but occasionally the rythm starts.

Is my HDD marching towards its death? Or perhaps I just need to vaccuum it? What's going on? :eek:

[Hooligan]

make a backup ASAP...

start looking into possible replacements.

your harddrive is about to take a big poop

[Toytown]

Very very likely that the HD is about to die. Make sure that you have a backup of everything important on the drive as quickly as possible. Replace it as soon as possible, do not bother trying to wait it out as it will just give you more problems than are necessary, such as the hangup you got in CSS and bluescreens and slowdowns whenever the affected sectors are read/written to.

[Joe Average]

Go to the manufacturer's website (that made the hard drive) and grab their drive diagnostic utility and run a Quick test and an Advanced test after that to check for possible damage or probable impending drive failure. It could be just the drive going through some thermal recalibration (adjusts itself when it gets hotter/colder), but if the click-click-click is very very loud and discernible, then yes it's probably going to fail.

This page provides links to all the major manufacturer's drive testing tools:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

If for some reason your drive doesn't have such a tool, grab the Hitachi DFT utility (Drive Fitness Test). It's been known to work on almost every brand of drive and offer useful diagnostic data afterwards, but try to get the actual utility from the drive's manufacturer if they have one. Those tools can provide codes to use for RMAing (returning) the drive for warranty service or replacement whereas the Hitachi DFT will only provide a code for Hitachi/IBM drives for that purpose.

Good luck...

[defy]

Click of death :(

Backup immediately, and prepare a new hard drive/get a replacement.

[xenotype]

Sucks. Dead drive.

[GenBanks]

Thanks for all the advise... I'm still using the same hard drive right now, but it's getting more serious because now there are pauses weird freezes/pauses when the hard drive is being accessed. Very brief but noticeable.

I'm ordering a 1tb samsung spinpoint f1 and a 1tb wd eSata external hard drive for backups.

Hopefully this will keep me and my data happy and safe for a while :)

What should I do with the terminally ill hard drive? (I'm thinking it would be somewhat unethical to put it on ebay lol)

[eth00]

Well first check if it is still under warranty, maybe you will be lucky. Assuming it is not do anything from throw it away, take it apart, or find any number of fun ways to destroy the drive.

[Zardoz]

Get a replacement Death

[DonDon]

Take it apart and pull the magnets that drive the heads. They are crazy strong and fun to play with. Just don't give them to too small a kid, as they will pinch little fingers.

Don

[Kaldskryke]

make it into a speaker?

I'm kind of concerned now. I was defraging my system disk the other day and it spent quite a while at 5%, during which it made a rhythmic ticking no louder than a regular seek. After about 10 minutes it started crunching away as per usual. Is this also the click of death or would that be louder?

[zwanzig]

my drive also went dead from this clicking sound

is there a way to recover the data??

[DonDon]

my drive also went dead from this clicking sound

is there a way to recover the data??

Cheaply and easily, no. If you are no longer able to access the drive, it will prolly have to go into a professional recovery service.

Dig around in the forums here a bit, or search on the web for data recovery software. A lot of the pay programs have a trial version that will check your drive to see if it can read anything, and let you know what they think they can recover before you buy it.

Don

[Eva_Unit_0]

my drive also went dead from this clicking sound

is there a way to recover the data??

sure, you just re-copy the data from the backups that you've been keeping all along. ;)


If you don't have backups, and there was critical data on the drive, here's the steps:
step 1: smack yourself for not making backups of important data
step 2: if the drive still kind of works, then maybe you can copy the data to a good drive before it dies. Pray that it lasts long enough, and pray the copies aren't corrupted.
step 3: if the drive is completely dead, i.e. it is not accessible in any way from a running system, then your only option is expensive professional data recovery

[StarTrek4U]

my drive also went dead from this clicking sound

is there a way to recover the data??

There's a remote possibility that you can get it to fire up by sticking it in the freezer for about 15 min or so, then putting it in a system and seeing if it will fire up. If it does, copy everything ASAP as it may not last very long. By no means a guarantee but it has helped me out in a number of situations.

[LittleMike]

Here's my two cents as an IT guy:

Clicking = death coming real soon. The click you are hearing is the motor stopping and starting. That's why you get the freezing/stuttering. Once the motor goes, there is no way to recover the data on the drive short of a professional data recovery service. And they can get *expensive* (upwards of $5,000). Not only that, but they don't guarantee they can recover everything from the drive. Point being - back up your data frequently, and definitely take everything off that drive if you still can.

As far as data recovery tools go, I use runtime.org's suite of tools. They have saved me a bundle. A side note on that, though. Data recovery tools like that only work if the drive is still accessible - like if you have a broken MFT table or something. In other words, if mechanically it's sound, but something got screwed in the file system, you would use those tools to recover the data. Other than that, you're screwed.

And the freezer trick does work. Throw a dead drive in the freezer for a few and try it again. If you can breathe enough life into it to get your stuff off, you're gold. But definitely look into replacing the drive before you get to that point if you can.

Good luck!

If the drive