A failing hard drive sometimes emits a really distinctive sound. In this video I show you how the inside of the hard drive looks while making that sound.
Well dang. I looked for some of my Blender files and realized my whole drive was gone. I hot swapped it out and back in and this click is what I'm greeted to. Funny though, that was my backup, so my backup failed before any actual used drives did lol. Really helpful info though, thanks for sharing.
For mission critical files, always follow the 3 2 1 rule: 3 copies of your data across 2 different types of media 1 of which is physically in a different location
Funny thing is this is exactly what happened to me… Looked for some Blender files the other day and noticed my hard drive wasn’t working, then I unplugged and plugged it back in and panicked because it started clicking…
My PC is about 11 years old, all this time the Seagate Barracuda 750GB included has been working fine, about a couple of months ago I heard a series of constant clicks, they stopped after a reboot, now 2 months later I just had another series of clicks, sounded like a constant drop of water, followed by a blue screen which I could not read since it disappeared very quick. I rebooted with long press power button and now PC is working fine again. I read that sometimes the clicking can be caused by a faulty PSU, the only change I did was to install a small SSD a couple of months ago. Do you think I should replace my HDD? Having clicks every couple of months is also considered a click of death?
I wasn't getting the click of death but I was getting the power saving occasional clicks, thank you for the explanation I am much less worried now!!! Very informative
This constant click of death is only appearable when i load my hdd by launching or playing a high-end (for my PC) game, it doesnt do it when im surfing or leaving it idle. So what causes it?
I have the same issue after manually releasing the spinning heads from the platter. The thing is, the device driver is activated when hdd is connected, but the partition is not shown. Can someone tell me sweet-sweet lies and say that this is still somehow fixable? I don't care about the drive itself, maybe any chance to get data, or at least it's part from the drive?
I own 2 hdd internal and one external hdd conected to my computer through rshtech docking station usb port. These hdd are one black caviar one red and one esential. When i wanted to acces all hdd in the same time the computer freezed and i had to use the power button on the back of docking station in order to restart. That docking station prevent my computer from shut down. After i restarted i noticed that all 3 hdd became more slow to respond after they are put to sleep. They wake up in 10 sec. Before the incident it took 2 sec. only. I also hear one slight click when they wake up. There are no health problem reported with hdtune yet. I have not check them for bad sector. What could have happen and if there is a way to solve out? Thank you for the great review.
What I think happened: one of your hdds is starting to have problems and your system froze because of it. The fact that you were accessing all 3 at that time is a coincidence. You need to find the drive with problems, back up the data from it and do a full surface scan and maybe format it. Depending on the results you see if you can continue to use it or not.
Hi, I just a got a new laptop two days ago and I've noticed very quiet clicks coming from it. I've checked the HDD and it has no bad sectors. Do I need to replace it?
Hi. Many laptop hard drives have a really aggresive power management, so it might just be parking the heads really often. Also, it could be just read/write noises.
@@UltimateDIY Yes, it's a Lenovo laptop with AMD so it has both of their tools for power management and such! Thanks a lot, I'll check the settings in the respective apps.
Esclareceu a minha dúvida, a minha HD, fica clicando, coloquei o disco em outro dispositivo novo e continuou a mesma coisa,. Vendo o seu vídeo entendi o por que acontece isso. Muito obrigado pelas explicações.
Bought a HDWD240UZSVA (Toshiba, 4TB, SMR, 3.5'', P300) recently... That aggressive parking is driving me crazy. Was searching all around for some HDD click videos. Yours is educational and helpful. Thanks. As for my case, the thing parks the moment data access/transfer is over. I appreciate the power saving, since I am not the only customer and that would help reduce burden on planet slightly. But I do not appreciate the mechanism hitting plastic over and over which causes owners to get more anxious and drives them nuts until they throw the HDD out of window and cause more e-waste.
@@UltimateDIYthe head on my data drive is just stuck in parking slot. It’s not going to the data platters to read and write. Data platters are clean but techs don’t want to fix it.
the "not a click of death part (@ 6 min) gave me a bit of relief.. I bought a 14tb drive to merge /store & sort a bunch of data on and it sat for a long time. I made SURE it was secure (no drops/falls,etc) but finally installed it in my desktop computer.. there's nothing on it yet (just installed & partitioned) and I notice every several minutes, that 'click' but it's intermittent, and seems to time with inactive time. - there's no programs on it; the CPU is running off a separate M2 SSD chip & my current useage storage is on an external SSD for the moment. ________________ With this power-cycle little clicks, is it bad design & I should really look for something else? -Should I approach the Mfr warranty (before loading & processing lots of data) to swap out under warranty? - kinda bummed as it was rather expensive for me, and I learned my lesson once from a different HDD that slipped about 6" on a shelf & tipped over & was dead (2TB HDD). I've been extremely careful with this one. thanks for your experience & recommendation/suggestions.
Hi i just got this on my hdd it clicks then my pc freeze and goes back to normal afterwards and repeats the same thing for a few minutes, should i be worried about it ?
My external drive does exactly this but it is not damaged. It was not dropped. I need to get my data off and I have tried using Disk Drill and others but they got no data after scanning. I guess it wasn't really scanning if it did this. What do you advice. I keep all my stuff on this drive and have no backup.
Hi yesterday I got My HDD really like this, and cant open windows, so i change it to a new hard disk, but still can't get my old files, what should I have to do? (The disk is clean and there is no scratch on it)
@@UltimateDIY i already opened it because my computer can't even detect it, nothing will come when i plug that hard disk, can i use software like disk drill, without my computer reading the disk?
Sorry, but YT deleted your last comment. All I could see is that you already opened it because it was not detected, or something like this? In that case, there is no way to recover the data without a data recovery company.
I sometimes hear only one click sound, happens random. Not sure if it's my 5 year old HDD or not. Since I switched my other Pc Parts two month ago. But it happens since beginning of the year and so far it works just normal. 🙈
@@UltimateDIY Thing is, I never noticed this sound before. Only since my GPU died on me, nearly giving me a Heart attack (cause it was sparkling), since that day I noticed the smalles sounds in fear something is dying again... 🙈
Good thing SSDs are now replacing most HDDs due to their short lives, etc. This could also be seen in most next gen laptops, computers, gaming consoles, etc.
I can't even begin to express my frustration right now. I hired a so-called "professional" DIT team, and what did they do? First, they dropped my SSD during the shoot and broke it! Thank God I had the data backed up on other drives and could repair it. Then, as if that wasn't enough, during editing, one of my HDDs started making clicking noises and became unreadable. And guess what? I discovered they hadn't even made two backups as they should have. At this point, words fail to describe my feelings toward them. I'm beyond disappointed and livid. This isn't just unprofessional; it's irresponsible. #FML
My smaller external hard drive started making sounds after a fall and no longer pops up on the computer (showing up as "not recognized" and "unallocated" in disk management), is it the same thing? Sorry about the link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1IyvWwFFg7g.html
I would not power on such a hard drive anymore and directly send it to a data recovery company. But from the sounds in that video, it might be too late, as heads probably are scratching the platters.
Indeed, but I have a friend who's new 512gb ssd failed after just a few months with 0 warnings. It was working well, then a blue screen and it wad gone. So that is a little scary.
@@UltimateDIY I know it's an old video but I tought SSD was the reliable option... Then what can I do to keep my data safe? In talking about almost twenty years of data that has been passed through different drives and I already lost several IMPORTANT archives and media due to drive deterioration and I was already on my way to migrate everything to SSD
Hey so I was wondering.. I was upgrading my old macbook to ssd and put the old HDD into a CD Dolly. Now it makes very light, soft clicks.. Is that okay? I can't find the answer online with whatever I'm searching and I don't have any important info on it I just don't want to spend more money on another ssd. Do you think the HDD will be fine? It's tightened into the dolly as much as I could. Tried loosening too and didn't help.
A week ago I noticed my pc making this exact click noise. My pc is really old so when it started making this noise I didn’t pay much attention to it, it would always make weird noises. Unfortunately, today I turned on my pc only to see a black screen saying, “Boot disk has not been detected or the boot disk has failed”. Does this have to do with the hard drive? Does the hard drive have anything to do with booting up my pc? I haven’t found any way to go around the black screen of death…
I don’t really care about my pc itself, but I have a ton of art projects I don’t have archived that I really want back. Can I also restore my data somehow??
Yes, BIOS is telling you it cannot boot into Windows (Because either the connections go bad) or the drive has failed. Surprisingly, sometimes connections from the mother board port or on the drive itself are loose or failed. Check those first (Both the small plug (Data) and the larger Multi-wire one (Power). I have had those issues.
For me the click of death happends when my pc starts to get used on a game or something. And after some time in the game that hdd keeps disconnecting and then reconnecting again. Nothing valuable on this drive, just want to know if it's the end for it.
My hdd clicks only when i turn my system on, but sometimes it doesnt click. I dont know of its my power supply because my system is working fine and i'm using the same sata power cable with ssd and hdd. And i dont know if its the hdd or this cable. Everything else is working fine.
When i plug my hard drive it click 2 times and shut off suddenly what problem and one more hard drive started with 2 or 3 time slightly clicking and running but no read when i boot my pc full screen logo stucks for 2 or 3 mintute after that bios open no disk shown in bios
You already removed the screw of head pivot point during the removal of upper shell (as seen on upper right side in the video) so when coils energized head arm moves up due the to magnets then strikes the platter of course.
I don't have the drive to check, but would that not be a stupid design? To tighten that only trough the case. But the noise was made by the drive exactly the same before opening it up.
If the platters are scratched, not really. If they are in good condition, then they can be moved togeter with the electronic board into an identical hard drive. But all of this needs to be done in a clean room.
why do manufacturers not use stronger material to hold that head, I mean after so many years of laptops with same "no bootable device" you'd think they'll create better hard drives
the "indectrutable drive" would be too costly. I think, 1GB drive could costs like 500$ or 1000$. They would be able to make drive that is very durable, but it would be not profitable. Everyone would buy 50$ or 100$ common drive. Actually, there are more quality drives, for example WD "RE" series. But not many people buy them. They buy usually GREEN stuff, maybe BLUE. People are usually not willing to pay even 10-20$ extra, and often goes for cheaper solution. This forced them to make drives that are in most cases usable for 4-7 years, but from time to time, die. Seagate is good example of it. Once, it was maybe best hard-drive company, but then, they fallen... because of finantial issues. There were also many very good motherboard manufacturers. Like AOpen, DFI, Abit, Soyo. They bankrupted, other companies bought them. Etc... Seagate bought Maxtor for example. With your hard-drive, that is ultra durable, you would not survive on market, it would be too costly.
If the heads have already collided with the platters, there is nothing that you can do to fix it. It would require you to have a working donnor drive and replace damaged parts.
I don't understand how can't it be fixed if only that plastic is damaged? like it isn't screwed, the plates look good and heads too. Isn't it just replacing plastics?
A repair shop might be able to fix it to get data out, but without that plastics there was already head collision, so things might seem fine, but probably are not 100% fine.
Is something wrong with my hard drive because it clicks whenever im turning on my game. I checked it and it says its ok. And it doesn't click while im playing, only when starting the game
Not really. Head parking is a standard feature. But, if the clicking noise is really loud and repetitive (also the pc starts to be slow) then the hdd has a problem.
my harddrive only does a clicking noice then disconnect then connect again when i copy data to it or installing on it what does that mean also not all the time
@UltimateDIY its a click then it stops then clicks again after a while like when it reaches the end then goes back but it disconnects then it reconnects again
@UltimateDIY i did a format seems to be oky for now wonder could it be power because im running 12 harddrives a i513400 cpu gtx 1660 super 32gig ram and 2 keyboards a mouse and a mic
@@UltimateDIY it's on a Xbox one so is it dying I've still got around 20 days so I can return it and get another one or should I just get me another hard drive and slap it in the Xbox
@@randomcro24 search online on forums for the particular hdd model that you have. I had one that was parking the heads extremely often. It was not a failure, it was designed like that. But I did not like it and modified it's firmware. Video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D1IEdpFveJ8.html
@@UltimateDIY my Mrs in Romanian. Been there a few times, visited Bucharest, craiova, hunedoara, bals, and sibiu. Really nice place and even nicer people. Obviously you have a few bad people but you get them everywhere, definitely changed my outlook on the country and the people. Multumesc!
Bruh. If the head is broken you see no scratch you can buy for hdd donor and try replacing the platters like professional data recovery company do. And i aint doing shit if you replaced it in disgusting room
@@UltimateDIY in hindsight, i think i may have come across a bit mean. i think your video was truly educational. i have heard this exact same thing in an old hard drive of mine once, not knowing what inpending doom was waiting for me (i was still a teenager then). but now, knowing quite a bit more about computers and its components, this sound strikes fear into me XD like, i go full on panic mode XD thank you for showing us everything and explaining it so well 👍
No worries! I know what you say. Last week my 5TB external hdd made the same noise. I went into full panic mode. After that I realised it was connected to a usb hub that had too many things pluged in and was not providing enough power, so the hdd was turning on and off continuously. Or, at least I hope that is what it was, because it worked perfectly when I pluged it into the laptop directly.
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