Clicking Hard-drive (with Video)

Hi,

All of a sudden one of my hard drives inside my computer has started clicking. It started doing it last week, and has not stopped since.

I have had this PC setup (untouched) for around 1 year. So I think the hard-drives near the end of it's life? what do you guys think?



Is this the click of death sound?


Many thanks!

Chris.

 

Hard drives typically last for many years. Even budget models are typically warrantied for 3. It should not be dying after 1 year. Check your warranty.

That said, clicking drives are typically a warning of impending doom. The noise comes from the read/write head banging on the end-stops in a futile attempt to find where it thinks it needs to be. And when it cannot find it, it tries again, and again, and again until forever, or the stepper motor breaks.

The very first thing you need to do is make a backup of the data on that drive you don't want to lose. Then shop for a new drive. There is really nothing more you can do.

Do NOT freeze it, bang on it, or move it while it is spinning. Anyone who claims they fixed a drive by freezing it is probably lying. Or they heard it from their brother-in-law's cousin's best friend's little sister's boyfriend. The original story to that "myth" came from 30 or so years ago and the idea was freezing would cause the worn and damaged seized motor bearings to contract enough due to the extreme cold to un-seize the bearings and allow the motor to spin. For one, your motors are not seized. But also, those motors warm up quickly (especially with worn/damaged bearings creating a lot of friction) so they will seize again (and likely more severely) within a few seconds, much before being able to recover any data.

Plus, contrary to what many believe, PC and notebook hard drives are not hermetically sealed. They are designed with a filtered pressure equalization hole that allows air to pass through, but not dust. Moisture/humidity in the air can pass through too, however. And when you freeze and thaw a drive, this moisture can condense in large enough quantities to leave water spots on the platters or even in extreme cases, short out electrical circuits.

So again, check your warranty. That will not help with your data (so back it up now, if possible), but maybe save you some money.

 

Most who have done it successfully would just say they got a drive that failed to start, or crashed soon after boot, to work for long enough to rescue valued data from it.

I've only needed to 'freeze' 2 drives, enabling me to successfully get the data off. No one (outside those who cannot afford a replacement drive) would ever want to use such a 'known bad' drive ever again, so the condensation factor is irrelevant.

Of course, data recovery company shills love to call it "the freezer trick" and claim it's a myth.

 

Like most myths, they usually are based on some truth. To be sure, I said above that anyone who claims to have "fixed" a drive by freezing it is probably lying. I only know of one case, as reported to me many years ago by someone I trust, where freezing allowed the user to retrieve "a" (as in 1) important document before the motor seized again.

Freezing only might help with seized motor bearings and seized motor bearing are just one of many possible problems hard drives encounter. Freezing can NEVER help with corrupt data, damaged R/W head, damaged stepper motor (the one that moves the R/W arm), or the controller boards.

As far as data recovery shills and their claims, I agree 100% with what you are saying. I don't agree with their "scare tactics", but I appreciate their reasoning behind them. As is often the case with many things that break, in the interest in avoiding expensive repair costs users often will attempt first to fix it themselves and in the process, make matters worse. One of the worst things anyone can do with a failing drive is to keep using it. Yet that is exactly what users (including me) do. We run all sorts of diagnostics, often downloading those programs to the same drive . Yet for the best odds for data recovery, the drive should immediately be taken to an expert. This is especially true of the boot drive where the OS is constantly writing (or trying to write) temp files to the drive.

If only everyone simply kept current backups!

 

I'll have to call you out on the controller board claim (or should I call it a myth?) , the second drive crashed soon after boot and, with the side panel removed, I could see/smell why - a damaged IC cooking. 'Freezing' allowed the IC to remain cooler for long enough to get the data off. Saved the owner time and cash by not needing to buy freeze spray or tracking down and buying a working replacement 'board to swap in.

 

Well, okay. I'll buy that - I've used "freeze spray" before too. So I should have stuck with my original claim and say that freezing will never "fix" a controller.

 

In the past, I too have frozen some HDDs, 2 drives with success and 3 drives without success. Please note this was a last resort prior to opening the drive up to inspect the heads and arms and I already had replacement drives. The frozen drives would never be used again and were disassembled for a post mortem immediately after the data was saved

@Digerati freezing doesn't really fix a drive but may allow you to read it a couple more times but it is really just a gamble. In my case one of the drives was unreadable prior to freezing but I managed to get 80% back which was much better than nothing and the other I got 100% data back. Of the three unsuccessful drives two had a broken conductor in one of the read heads and the other one had a problem with the voice coil actuator so freezing would never help these drives. The two successful ones were both very old enterprise drives and on later inspection both had worn bearings because the grease was sticky and no longer lubricating properly. Before freezing neither of these two drives would spin up to full speed and were constantly clicking.

Normally I never bother this much with HDDs as I consider them disposable (everyone has backups right) but when someone needs the data because they have no backups and offers $$$$ ...........

 

I am assuming he was being sarcastic. Sadly, most users (by a vast majority ) don't have a "good" backup policy and don't keep current backups. And note a "good" backup policy is not an attached external drive sitting on your desk. A "good" backup policy includes several backups and several backup locations. Folks need to think about "physical security" too. What happens if bad guys break into your home? Chances are they will take your computer and any external drives sitting nearby too. What happens if your house burns to the ground, is flooded, or leveled by a tornado, hurricane or earthquake? So at least one backup in an "off-site" location is essential. This might be the cloud, a trusted neighbor, friend or relative, or best yet, a safe deposit box at your bank.

Backups are not just for drive failures.

 

Yep you nailed it..... most people don't have good backups
+1 .... I totally agree with the above backup info