Hard Drive Makes a Clicking Sound - Comments Page 2

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

In 15 years of experience, Seagate is the drive most often prone to ZIP ZIP click click click. Have one that did that a month ago, one that is about to die. Sometimes with Cgate, lifting the cpu case up about an inch and banging it down will free the heads. If this works, move all critical files IMMEDIATELY, as this drive does not have long.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This may also knock other components loose. You might want to reseat your RAM and adapter cards after the "drop" technique.

Started hearing the dreaded clicking today and it would frequently be followed by a temporary freezing or locking of the system. After about 2 hours of this intermittent behaviour, the system completely locked up. Tried a reboot and was welcomed with the screen saying 'no array found', great.... the Raid Array is hosed. Well, no, apparently the internal SATA cabling had become intermittent. The fix was pulling the cables in and out a few times on both the hard drive and the motherboard side to clean the contacts and then making sure they were firmly seated. System has been running several hours since with nary a click.

I think my hard drive is dust. It started with clicking. Now that is gone. After reading up on your tutorials I ventured into recovery mode. I got through chkdsk/r, fixmbr, and fixboot and it still won't boot all the way. It goes through the steps and looks promising and then there is a quick blue screen with an error and it shuts off and reboots. This cycle never ends. I can't get it to boot in safe mode either. I notice now it mentions that something is wrong with my hard drive when it tries to reboot. Should I bother trying to use your handy tip and buy a kit to try to use this as an external drive on another computer to grab my pics and music or call the expensive professionals? I just hate to spend mega bucks on data recovery.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If the drive is OK, but just won't boot, that will give you access to the files. You could also boot with the XP CD, and see if you can view the files on the C: drive to make sure.

My hard drive has been clicking for some time, but only while restarting(I don't restart often) Just last night I shut it off because I had to prep it for a new PC to save troble of reinstalling everything. Now it wont Boot and as well it clicks.

My BIOS will not recognize it and I have put it back in exactly how it was(Proper cables where they were). I have yet to try some things but over all it is a dampener on my gaming.

250GB Maxtor 7200RPM SATA HDD

Here are some clicking/whirring/drilling/knocking and other sounds the drives make with explanation.

Hope this helps someone.

although most clicking noises result in harddrive failure, having worked in the IT (computer) field for 12 years, i have found two hard drives where clicking was fine..... I consider most harddrive failure noises to be a "clunk" and not a click... however the two that worked........ were more of a click than a clunk..... I suggest backing up any unusual behavior...... the first ran for 6 months before i replaced it out of fear.... the second ran for 1 month before being replaced out of fear... (1 was work related, the other personal)....... Keep in mind these were different sounding than the usual "click of death"....... if you dont know the sound.... assume the worst.... backup ASAP

I would also like to point at that someone commented on clicking being caused by a full drive.... this is purely coincidental..... clicking is a failure no matter how it sounds..... It might last 2 minutes... it might last 2 years.... but it is abnormal use either way

Thanks for the writeup. Your sound in the first line doesn't work... While googling about my drive I came across this page with all kinds of sounds: http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
Hope this could be helpful for someone.

Thanks my HD was clicking in the new housing , so i thought it was going out.I turned it on its side and now everything is ok . No more clicking sound ,thanks

Thanks for your sound advice. I got out the level and checked. My computer was not even close to level. After adjustment to level, it works perfectly with no clacking noise.

Bob, Ihave a question for you. I bought a computer for my shop from a local pawn shop, with windows XP PRO,when it came time for windows updates, I said yes, then I got the notice i might be a victum of counterfeiting software. they sucked up a lot of the files and every time I lookup any thing with the word microsoft,remove xp, ect, it sucks it up, locks it up. Can i just clean it blank and start fresh, buy new hard drive, or what? Help. Alan

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, you should reformat and install a licensed, legal copy of XP. Start here: http://askbobrankin.com/reformat_hard_drive_under_xp.html

Try defragmenting the Drive, it solved my problem.

chkdsk c: /R implies /F