Hard Drive Makes a Clicking Sound - Comments Page 2

And yet again, another hard drive bites the dust! Ahhhh yes, another 3 years worth of data down the drain. After 10 years in the IT field you'd think I'd have a backup plan in place! I think it was just about 2 weeks ago when I was telling myself to hook up that external drive and back up the laptop......ahhhh hindsight!

Don't mess with those Maxtor drives. They'll only break your heart in the long run. My best friend had an external 100GB Maxtor drive that failed after a few months. When my external 75GB drive - also a Maxtor - started clicking, I sensed the writing on the wall. I took it out of its shell and made it internal. So far, so good, but I know it's only a matter of time...

I've had plenty of failures. If you have a bad external (had tons) you can usually open the enclosure and an IDE harddrive will be inside. Sometimes plugging that in itself will work. On others, I've seen windows not detect ANYTHING, even shutdown my processor because it was overheating, almosy 80Celcius. I popped it in my Ubuntu machine and it read it perfectly (this has happened with many drives and windows). If you have a linux machine available I highly recommend trying that. Windows is not the best operating system for oddly working hard drives. People bring me their drives frequently now because I have yet to find a faulty hard drive (that turns on) that ubuntu didn't read for me to copy it off.

I guess I was lucky the last time my hard drive failed. I had a 120GB Western Digital with Windows XP on it. When it failed, my OS wouldn't boot up. I bought a new hard drive and luckily, I was able to copy the files over to the new drive as if the 120GB was another drive.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Why do you say "As if?" It WAS another drive, it just couldn't boot. That means the drive didn't actually fail, but the boot record got damaged. Most often this can be fixed with the TESTDISK program.

I have a HDD that will randomly begin clicking, no crashes yet, but it seems to reboot itself frequently. It happens while idling or running a cpu heavy program, so it's not just an idle issue. It sounds similar to the damaged head 1 sound file in the article attached, only it's not as frequent. It will click around every 4-20 seconds and will persist until the unit is shut down. I have been told that it is failing heads or that it's a windows issue (however, I would think that one of the many OS reinstalls i have done would solve that problem). Is my HDD ready to go to computer hell or is there just a simple fix?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've never seen a HD clicking issue that wasn't a serious hardware problem. Grab your data and a life vest... this drive is sinking!

I have a Western Digital External 500GB HD that makes a soft ticking sound when spooling up. It ticks about 4 or 5 times then a few seconds and ticks 2 more times then nothing. My computer does not recognize the drive when plugged into a USB port. If I plug the drive in to a USB after the drive is on the computer asks me to format the disk before use. Can you help me? Thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A ticking hard drive is almost always a sign of serious trouble. This may help: http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html

I have a Dell Inspiron XPS. When I try to start my computer up I hear a ticking noise (which I have heard is imminent DOOM) and even worse my computer tells me it can't locate the hard drive. Is there ANY repair I can do? There's no important data on the computer so I won't be out of luck completely, but I have been looking for a replacement hard drive and I can't find anything. just wondering if you know if there is any repair and if not where I could get a new hard drive because I've been looking everywhere and can't find one. Thanks!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Check here: http://www.impactcomputers.com/dellparts-dell-laptops-dell-inspiron-xps-parts-storage.html

My hard drive this morning started making a disturbing ticking or clicking sound sporadically, louder than the normal read/write clicking. If this is hardware failure, this is quite disappointing, as I've had this computer (with its Seagate disk) for only about 6 months. HD monitoring programs say there are no problems, however. Should I be worried?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would worry... do you have a backup plan?

ive got a Maxtor hard drive, i have had no problems such as crashing or rebooting it self as of yet. but it makes a weird clicking noise while it is loading things for example while in games it is constantly clicking thank god i cant hear it because of the in game sounds, as i type this is is even clicking while loading something in the background, any idea on how to stop this sound? its extremely annoying.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You've been warned...

i have a lot of my kid's pictures and their childhood videos and i am heartbroken. i have a beyond micro external 500GB hard drive and it makes a clicking sound. it's trying to read but doesn't get beyond that point where it will register to the PC. I try putting it in the freezer (other forum suggested it and it worked for other people with hard drive failures)but it doesn't work in my case. Any help or suggestions?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may need a data recovery service. See http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html