Salvage data from a failing HD (making constant clicking noise)

Arese · 10 Jul 2020

Hey guys,

My 10 years old HD has finally died.
One day when I started my PC, the HD started to make a constant clicking noise which I think comes from the read/write arm or head.
By the sound of it's mechanically stuck in some sort of loop as I can continuously hear: click-click ----- click-click ------ click-click
It's not completely dead because it can eventually load and boot windows even if it takes like 15min to boot.
When it does that sound the read/write speed drops to 1MB/s (i've noticed that in the past)

I've booted my system using Kyhi's bootable recovery tool because I knew it wouldn't need my HDD to load the system's files and now I'm trying to transfer my files to my 2nd HDD simply using windows explorer at the moment.

But look It's really interesting, the clicking noise will eventually stop for 10s and if I manage to lunch the transfer of the file in that window, it will work fine and the file will be copied at a transfer rate of 100MB/s.
However during the transfer when the clicking noise reappear the transfer speed will drop to 1MB/s. Clicking noise stops, goes back up to 100MB/s and so on.

However the above trick only work if I start the transfer during that limited time when the HD stops making the clicking noise.
If I start to copy a file when it's doing the clicking noise, the transfer speed never pick up and stays under 1MB/s

Based on the above, I was wondering if anyone could think of any way or tool to make my HDD temporarily more stable while I transfer my files.

Thanks

Caledon Ken · 10 Jul 2020

When a drive starts to click, if it is the click I think, it usually is gone and you can't normally get anything.

Be patient. Anything to check or alter hdd will likely further aggravate the situation.

What software are you using for backups?

Winuser · 10 Jul 2020

I take it you don't have a backup of the drive on another drive? It's a mechanical problem and the only thing I can suggest is to get as much of your data copied off of it before it stops working.

Berton · 10 Jul 2020

Salvage data from a failing HD (making constant clicking noise)-800px-laptop-hard-drive-exposed-2.jpg

In the orange box is/are the arms that hold the read/write heads. They travel across the spinning disks/platters. Those are the only moving parts and the clicks one hears is usually the arms snapping back to their resting position when the power is off/lost or the drive is not being read, trying to be accessed.

Depending upon the data it may be retrieved by a company that does it but it gets expensive in a hurry. Used to not be too bad, had to do one for a business about 20 years ago as their books were on it, evaluation cost was $150 which applied to the actual work, came to $350 total but that was before drives starting to get big and users saving music, videos and pictures, have heard upwards of $1000 now.