Hard drive noisy sounds. Clicking drives

Almost all present-day computer hard drives are usually nearly silent but some do make a quite audible sound when they're being accessed. And this is normal sound of moving heads seeking requested sectors on the disk patterns.

On the other hand, if you start hearing noises that you've never heard before - like clicking, grinding, clanking, or squealing - your hard drive is failing.

The best tactic in terms of the data safety is instantly unplug the power cord of that device (computer or an external storage box) to prevent any further damage to the magnetic surfaces from such simple mechanical malfunctioning.

The physically destroyed magnetic layer of the internal disk platters can become in non-repairable state, if you overuse the crashing drive after its initial failure.

When the data on the hard drive is more important to you than the hard drive itself - avoid running any hard drive diagnostic software. It is true, that many diagnostic utilities of all kinds are available on many PCs or downloadable through the Internet and including more advanced ones from third party software developers are able to test and sometimes even partially repair failed drive. However, when you are running software tool (even the most sophisticated), the process will be requiring to power back up the hard drive and make it spin, and there you are back to square one: a repetitive clicking or other noisy sound of your dying data.

Worse part of using diagnostic utilities outside the recovery lab – none of them are able stop the process if something goes wrong, - for example when something scratches the data layer inside the drive.

The permanent solution for those, who do not have an extra copy of data, located on failing drive is to seek for help from a professional data recovery lab - to extract files from clicking drive.