That rhythmic tick-tick-tick has a mechanical meaning, a nickname and one property to understand above all else. That property is this: with each power-on, it gets worse. Here’s what physically happens inside the case, the myths which ruin clicking hard drives, and how to retrieve data.
The click is what you hear when the read/write arm moves across the disk & fails to find its bearings. It slams back down into rest position & tries again. Each time it sweeps there is a risk of touching the spinning platters where your data lives.
An arm inside every hard drive moves read/write heads across spinning platters reading servo tracks written onto the surface of the disk. If the head can’t read those bearings (due to failure of a head, damage to the surface where navigation data lives or dead electronics that amplify the head signal) the arm swipes around looking for something it recognises & then snaps back up to the parking ramp. Swipe, fail, park. That is the click repeating as the drive continues to retry. Sometimes the cause is only one degraded head out of several; sometimes it is due to a fault on the circuit board causing power issues for the heads; occasionally it is the aftermath of a knock or drop. They sound identical from outside, which makes guessing expensive.
The heads fly over the platters on a cushion of air thinner than a fingerprint. A drive that has lost its bearings is an arm moving very quickly with greatly reduced control for surfaces that have all your data, and when a failing head hits a spinning platter it does not scratch the data but rather tears through it sending debris flying that will cause additional contact. This is why the honest advice appears to be radical: power it down and keep it down. Do not try another reboot to access your tax documents; do not run an overnight clone operation; do not perform a “scan to find out what’s there”; recovery software cannot get to a drive that cannot find its way around and with each click you convert recoverable projects into partially recovered projects. The myths should also be named: putting the drive in a freezer introduces moisture to a mechanical problem; percussive taps on the case introduce additional physical damage onto previously existing physical damage; a swapped circuit board from a working donor drive will fail on modern drives due to the fact that each circuit board includes unique calibration data that was developed for its original drive.
On the workbench the steps are unromantic and they work: determine which type of failure is causing the click; if heads are the issue, replace them with a matched set of heads (use a similar donor drive); if electronic components are failing, fix at the component level using the calibration information specific to your drive; then create a complete image of your drive in a single go using hardware specifically designed to read difficult-to-read disk media: retry gently head by head and never allow an operating system to continually hammer the device. Your files will come off the image created from your failed drive, and never off the failed drive itself. The success rate of recovering data from clicking drives is highest when the drive has clicked least before reaching the recovery service provider; therefore, again, the most important piece of advice given today remains the same: stop the clicking by shutting down the power supply and let the clicking-drive service handle it. Wondering about the wider warning signs? The seven-signs guide maps the full catalogue.
For thirty seconds worth of certainty: fans and PSUs click too. Remove power from the drive (remove from an external cable as well) and listen again; if the click goes away when you unplug the drive then you know what’s going on. If the click remains when you move it to another machine or plug it into another cable, then that makes it absolutely clear.
No, this is the most persistent myth in all of data recovery. Freezing a modern hard disk causes condensation to form on the surface of the disks as they cool down causing additional physical pressure through thermal expansion on the components. Any claim of success using this method are at least two decades old since older drives were much less complex. A drive that clicks has been physically damaged mechanically. Cold does not mend broken bones. Every “freezer” drive we receive for diagnosis in-house arrives worse than the click alone would have left it.
The price is based upon each individual job as well, after the complimentary diagnostics, for the reason that “clicks” are as varied in terms of what could be occurring from a temporary misalignment at the head park to potentially damaging your hard drive platters. Single drives start from £300 + VAT, and where yours sits is determined by the diagnostic testing done to see which category your drive falls into. On all repairs, we can provide you with a fixed written quote prior to doing any charges; additionally, in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Please power off and call us. We offer a free 48 hour diagnostic. Where necessary, we provide head work on the bench. A written quote is provided prior to any services.