Hard Drive Makes a Clicking Sound - Comments Page 1

I've experienced with hardisk failure a few times. The most painful is when my laptop HD crash, hospitalized in ICU and beyond rescue. I lost my accounting data with no backup. It's always important to take action when you hear unusual noise generating from your HD. I ignore my laptop HD warning voice and I've to pay the price. Good to do the check disk regularly as well.

There are two types of computer users; those who have had a hard disc crash and those who will have a hard disc crash! This will happen to you. Back up, back up, back up!

A computer engineer told me of a customer who had lost many years of her Ph.d research paper due to a disc crash. She had no back up, I think it was six years of work she lost....

If you don't backup your data you have no one to blame but yourself. It is absolutely ridiculous to have only one copy of important data. I have absolutely NO sympathy for people who lose all of their data because they never bothered to backup.

And when your harddrive is making click of death sounds, isn't the time to BEGIN backing up, either. You should always have a backup ready and waiting. I am tired of hearing people crying and whining about lost data.

You can also get the click of death if you are running out of disk space on your hard drive. With the huge gigabyte drives there are today the tendency is to not worry about filling up your hard drive, but it can happen, especially in a world of MP3 files and JPGs.

When you hear that noise shut down immediately if the data is important. Do Not attempt to back up! The longer the drive continues to run the more the data will be damaged and unrecoverable. Take the disk to Data Doctors which has a clean room where they will unasemble the drive and recover the data.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you don't have a local computer repair shop that specializes in hard drive data recovery, do a Google search for "data recovery". There are LOTS of data recovery services.

My harddrive that has crashed happened when i got this new external harddrive encloser. The power tip that plugs into the harddrive was not marked, meaning you could fit it both ways, i accidently put it in without really looking and a smear of smoke came out. then i ordered a PCB from ebay and i got it and it runs but it doesn't load, i am now hearing a clicking sound. i guess my backup of information backfired.

Murphy's law.....I bought a Maxtor external hard drive. Backed up my system...checked it. It worked. Restored my system. When I went to transfer my old data to the newly restored system, all I got was clicking. Someone told me to try to install the card from the external drive directly into my computer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I have no idea what was meant by "the card". I've heard of people taking internal drivers and making them into externals, but not the other way around.

The people with the clicking and freezing hard drives are in bad luck. There might be two reasons why this is happening. First one is the power connector on the hard drive to the power supply. The connector has 4 pins witch are very gentle. If you unplug and plug it too much it will get horrific hardware happenings wich are you can check. just Try touching the cables (yelow black black red) in most cases the yelow happens to be the problem. If you move it an the hard drive shuts off try to back it up and buy new one.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would *NOT* recommend plugging or unplugging a hard drive with the power on.

My hard drive is making a clicking sound but it is not continual. And very shortly after beginning to make this sound, it shuts itself off. It does this only when I engage online games, animated graphics, dynamic backgrounds and/or display pics for msn, or watching online videos. Oh yes, and now when I activate a live cam or try to watch a movie from my external HD, or do a virus scan I get the same response. The computer shuts off before the scan can be done. It also usually shuts off during an installation of a downloaded program. This morning though, I noticed this clicking sound just after turning the computer on. Shortly after, it stopped. Does this sound familiar to you? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, it sounds like imminent doom. I'd replace the drive ASAP.

I'm no different than you guys at all. I was naive to the occurance of hard disk failures until it started purring. Then that dreadful sound of a fading hard drive ensued as it auto-restarts. I've had this problem before, but it used to be heat related, because I've seated the two hard disks, MAxtor Primary and Slave beside each other in the IDE panel, only separated by 2cm of air. When it heats up, temperatures could reach 59 degrees centigrade!( I know by installing a software called Hard Disk Sentinel which monitors hard disk heat, perfomance). I took out the Primary disk and let it hang out vertically on the casing's floor. I started having hard disk failures less frequently this time (every 4-5 hrs). That was until I discovered on this site that hard disks can not be placed on a slant. Fixed it on a makeshift panel, now it works fine

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