# My external hard drive doesn't sound healthy



## Conspiracy (Dec 1, 2013)

My iomega Prestige 1TB External Hard Drive keeps making a weird clicking noise. It also sounds like it's vibrating :| It has been doing this for a couple of weeks now. I've had it for about 2 years. I haven't dropped it or anything. It's working fine but it's just making that weird noise.

What's wrong with it?


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## ATLeow (Jun 2, 2013)

I have no idea what it is but it's been my understanding for several years, apparently as common wisdom, that if your hard drive starts clicking it's fucked and it's probably too late to save what's on it. Anecdotally this happened to the same friend of mine twice and he lost everything, his drives were corrupted.

Just off the top of my head, it _could_ be the needle hitting the disc but if that was happening you'd have noticed pretty quickly. I don't know.
If it's been working fine for two weeks, rock on.


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## Conspiracy (Dec 1, 2013)

That doesn't sound good  I may buy another one just in case I do lose everything. I have loads of photos on there I want.


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## Flipit (Nov 13, 2009)

Conspiracy said:


> My iomega Prestige 1TB External Hard Drive keeps making a weird clicking noise. It also sounds like it's vibrating :| It has been doing this for a couple of weeks now. I've had it for about 2 years. I haven't dropped it or anything. It's working fine but it's just making that weird noise.
> 
> What's wrong with it?


External hard drive clicking - any suggestions? - Hard Drives - Storage
WD external hard drive makes a repeated clicking sound

People suggest that the power or data connection cable might be the cause. Check the threads above.

If nothing works, buying a second external drive is no bad investment. In fact, I can only recommend backing up data in several places in case a drive fails unexpectedly.


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## CorrosiveThoughts (Dec 2, 2013)

Conspiracy said:


> My iomega Prestige 1TB External Hard Drive keeps making a weird clicking noise. It also sounds like it's vibrating :| It has been doing this for a couple of weeks now. I've had it for about 2 years. I haven't dropped it or anything. It's working fine but it's just making that weird noise.
> 
> What's wrong with it?


It's dying. The sound you're hearing is the disk head malfunctioning, also known as the click of death. I've had 2 or 3 internal HDDs die on me like that. You should try and back up as much data as the hard drive will let you in it's current state, before it ultimately fails completely.


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## Conspiracy (Dec 1, 2013)

I actually have some Christmas money left over so I'll go to Curry's tomorrow to buy a new one. I wouldn't mind a newer one anyway, mine is somewhat bulky compared to newer external hard drives.


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## geekofalltrades (Feb 8, 2012)

There's a battery of tests collectively known as S.M.A.R.T. that you can run on the drive to determine its health. There's a program called HD Tune Pro that offers a free 15-day trial that's pretty respected. I don't know if the fact that it's an external drive would be a problem; I don't think it would be?


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## TranceMan (Aug 26, 2012)

If your drive is clicking, the most you can do is try the freezer method and recover the data onto the other drive. It's toast, and whoever suggested it was a power/data connection issue, it has nothing to do with the power to it. It's mechanically kaput. That suggestion is about as useless as changing a car battery for an engine problem.


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## William I am (May 20, 2011)

Conspiracy said:


> My iomega Prestige 1TB External Hard Drive keeps making a weird clicking noise. It also sounds like it's vibrating :| It has been doing this for a couple of weeks now. I've had it for about 2 years. I haven't dropped it or anything. It's working fine but it's just making that weird noise.
> 
> What's wrong with it?


A clicking drive is a failing drive. There is only one thing in a drive that can click, and that's the heads. That means either there's a bad connection somewhere, bad power regulation, or failing circuitry you can't do anything about. 

You need to replace the drive. The one trick that might help you keep it alive long enough to clone the drive (identical sector-by-sector copy) is removing the control board and cleaning the corrosion off of the contact points between the control board and the spring-loaded contact pins. This will only buy you a little time if it works.

The chance it is a power-regulation issue is slim, but higher than with an internal drive. Get a hitachi. They're the best on the market. You couldn't pay me to run a maxtor (crapstor, max heat) or Western Digital (western didja lose all your data?) or even seagate now that seagate has had to ramp up their production to meet Dell's OEM demand for drives.


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## Flipit (Nov 13, 2009)

TranceMan said:


> If your drive is clicking, the most you can do is try the freezer method and recover the data onto the other drive. It's toast, and whoever suggested it was a power/data connection issue, it has nothing to do with the power to it. It's mechanically kaput. That suggestion is about as useless as changing a car battery for an engine problem.


 @Conspiracy
Please disregard the quoted comment, as it's completely unfounded. Do not immediately assume the worst. With data, however, the safe choice is always redundancy (i.e. buying a 2nd drive).

How did everything turn out?


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## digitalroses (Dec 7, 2013)

I had a Toshiba computer with a hard drive that made the same clicking noise. It's done it for about two years and is still working, the computer is just not mine anymore. I had barely any problems with it. Maybe I was lucky, probably! But to play it safe, you should definitely backup all your important files in case it fails sooner than expected.


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## William I am (May 20, 2011)

TranceMan said:


> If your drive is clicking, the most you can do is try the freezer method and recover the data onto the other drive. It's toast, and whoever suggested it was a power/data connection issue, it has nothing to do with the power to it. It's mechanically kaput. That suggestion is about as useless as changing a car battery for an engine problem.



That was me, and the freezer method can actually cause problems and hasten a drive's death by causing condensation of moisture form the air inside the drive.

I've saved many a customer's data by removing the control board, cleaning the corrosion off the connections, and reassembling.

A car battery actually CAN cause problems with a car (like with a dead cell), so can bad ground cables among other things.


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## TranceMan (Aug 26, 2012)

Flipit said:


> @Conspiracy
> Please disregard the quoted comment, *as it's completely unfounded.* Do not immediately assume the worst. With data, however, the safe choice is always redundancy (i.e. buying a 2nd drive).
> 
> How did everything turn out?


Please go back and get your A+ certification. If it's clicking, it's on the verge of dying. The most you can do IS assume the worst. 



William I am said:


> That was me, and the freezer method can actually cause problems and hasten a drive's death by causing condensation of moisture form the air inside the drive.


That is why you use vacuum sealed bags.



> I've saved many a customer's data by removing the control board, cleaning the corrosion off the connections, and reassembling.


Once again, this is a _mechanical_ issue. Cleaning the connections on the board does not stop the clicking. I also really hope you're not telling people to open their HDDs on a daily basis.



> A car battery actually CAN cause problems with a car (like with a dead cell), so can bad ground cables among other things.


You took my analogy completely out of context.

Let me rephrase. If it's a mechanical problem _with the engine_, changing the car battery is not fixing the problem. The battery is an electrical problem.


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## William I am (May 20, 2011)

@TranceMan: Sorry, but you're wrong. You're overlooking the fact that the mechanical heads are controlled by electronics - the control board.
Also, opening the drive is not what I'm recommending. The control board is on the outside of the drive and can be removed by removing a handful of torx screws. It takes 5 minutes, won't make cracked solder joints worse (freezer method can do this), and addresses an actual and common problem. Oh, and it doesn't require opening the drive. You should never do that, except in a "well, this is already nuked, but maybe it'll run long enough to copy the data" or "hey, I bet I can draw pretty patterns on this metal disc" situation.

I once crashed a hard drive's heads by shorting out a capacitor on the bottom of the drive with my finger. It's an electromechanical device, and everything mechanical in the drive is controlled by electricity. Every part of the drive's electricity is controlled by power-regulation in the form of IC timers and other capacitors. One of those goes bad, and it can have far-reaching effects. If the head-controller is being undervolted, the heads will click because it's not able to maintain power - just like a standard CFL on a potentiometer/rheostat-based dimmer will flicker when it's undervolted.


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## Zombie Devil Duckie (Apr 11, 2012)

I've used the freezer method when all else fails and it's the last thing possible (short of opening the drive in a clean room and imaging the platters) before tossing it in the shredder.

When it works, it gives you 1 last chance to save data off of the drive, and it's better performed on older drives. Don't try it with a solid state drive (SSD - no moving parts).


-ZDD


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## aef8234 (Feb 18, 2012)

Usually when something like a Hard Drive clicks, it means something is loose on it/maybe electrical shortcircuiting.

Something with as many intricate and delicate parts as a Hard Drive cannot be fixed just by human hands.
Soooooooo...
You're either screwed bro or it's starting to fall apart - either way bad news, save the data, buy a new External Hard Drive, then take it apart to figure out how it works.

Or make an origami duck.


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