Hard Drive Makes a Clicking Sound

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

Hi, My hard drive is making a ticking sound as everyone else's but this has happened three times. The first time it went on for quite some time and the computer would not start windows, just black screen and WAIT. After restarting the computer 20 times finally the noise stopped and all went back to normal. Then about 3 weeks later, the same thing, this time, I had to take off the top and take out the drive and putting a small weight on top of it made it work again. So today, once again, making the noise won't work. I would have bought another but it is a money thing. My son is very unhappy, the computer is his life. Is there any hope for me?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'd yank the drive and try to put it in a USB external enclosure. Hook it to another system and see if you can get any data off it.

Hi, my computer suddenly stopped working during the middle of a virus scan (which never happended before) so I restarted the computer and found out that the OS system was not booting up at all! So i figure I go to safe mode to see what the problem was, and couldn't because it was too slow when it ran the bios. After 30 minutes of waiting, it finally booted up to safe mode and I tried scanning, however and error came up 2 hours later (scan was not finished) saying that Windows Vista had an extreme error. When it first booted up again, I noticed a clicking sound either from my CPU fan or my hard drive. So I took the hard drive out and put it on a flash surface, and it seems that the hard drive was causing the noise! I couldn't believe of how a 5 month hard drive could go bad after a short period of time. Please help! (Cannot run OS system/too slow)

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would try connecting the drive to another machine, recover your important files, and then completely format the drive. It may have serious hardware issues and could better be replaced.

Hi, My hard drive has started making clicking sounds especially when i play games... And recently a few files have become corrupt... Is this another hard drive failure coz i hav got 2 hard drives which became corrupt in last 4 months... And could this problem be more deeper like may be some problem with my motherboard making my hard drives faulty coz three hard drives cant go bad in 4 months :-(.. Please help me

EDITOR'S NOTE: I suppose it's possible that some glitch in the motherboard could cause hard drives to go bad, but I cannot recall any discussion of it. But given your track record, it might not be a bad idea to swap out the motherboard.

Hi, I recently unplugged a secondary hard drive to install windows and after plugging it back in, there appears to be a click. I am not sure if it is this drive but the click comes maybe every 5 minutes or so. I am not worried about data as this is simply a backup drive.

All I did was unplug the power cable and then plugged it back in the next day, so I'm not sure what started this noise. Is there anything I can to diagnose the problem or stop the noise altogether? It is somewhat annoying. The drive is a refurbished seagate IDE replacement for a previously bad drive under warranty.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would unplug the drive and see if the click goes away. If it does you can be sure it's the one clicking. And if so, I'd run a diagnostic. Look here: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

My computer sometimes makes clicking sounds and after I reboot I get an error message that looks something like this 9C0000e9 or something like that. I use windows vista home premium (which sucks anyway). I believe this problem started after I removed a USB...does anybody have an idea how I could check if it's a harddrive problem???

I have 2 SATA drives, and after a power outage Windows cannot detect either drive. I hear a steady clicking sound from the drives. Am I hosed?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds likely... but it's possible that the problem lies with the cables or the motherboard. Try them in another computer if possible.

My laptop stop working. It start to make a clicking noise and did not start at all. Waiting a while it told me can not find the hard drive. That noise must be something that at least professionals know, so why nobody tell us what is wrong there?!

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would boot up with the Setup CD, and try the recovery console tools. See http://askbobrankin.com/recovery_console.html