Question Clicking noise from external HDD ?

[steveDJ]

Recently i obtained a blank 10TB external hard drive and when i plugged it in it made a clicking sound. I thought there must be some way to fix it so i googled how to fix it and according to some websites and videos it was fixable by realigning the heads etc. I did not want to attempt this myself so i went to a local computer store and they said it was dead and nothing could be done. They did not even plug it in to try it. My wife said it was probably not worth there time and effort fixing it. So did I misunderstand the information i found online and it's not fixable or was the computer shop not helpful or not willing to help with this issue?

 

[USAFRet]

Recently i obtained a blank 10TB external hard drive

From where, and for how much?

Is it still under warranty?

A drive making 'clicking noises' is rarely a good thing.

 

[evermorex76]

There's no such thing as "re-aligning the heads" for a user or even a normal computer shop in order to make the drive good again. (Certainly not for a user with no experience or knowledge of drive construction and function.) That's factory refurbishment work, done in a clean room with precision instruments and test equipment and replacement parts available for whatever has broken. Clicking and not being detected or not being able to read anything is a failure, full stop, and that drive is trash.

The ONLY reason for anyone to open up a hard drive outside a clean room to muck about with the internals (other than learning or for fun) is if you've got some technical ability and knowledge and want to swap parts from another identical drive in order to recover important data when you can't afford to send it to a recovery specialist or it's not quite worth that much. After you've done that, the drive is trash as it will never be reliable and could fail at any time, because you're guaranteed to have gotten some dust or other particles inside of it that will at some point damage the surface of the platters or the heads, destroying your data beyond recoverability. Imagine a stray hair being dragged across the surface of the most sensitive material in your PC.

Constant clicking either means the heads are hitting the surface of the platters, or they're trying to move from the parked position onto the platters and failing or it's not able to read anything (failed heads/electronics), so it snaps back to the parked position and tries again. Unfortunately drives aren't quite smart enough to report back "hey, I can't load the heads onto the platters" or "the heads are unable to read anything" in order to tell you that it's actually failed, and it just keeps trying.

 

[Misgar]

This site quotes the head flying height as 3 to 6 nanometres.
https://acsdata.com/data-recovery-3tb-seagate-hard-drive/

This web site quotes 3 to 7 millionths of an inch, not nanometres. Whatever the size, the separation is very small.
https://www.datarecoverytools.co.uk...ary-f-j/flying-heightfloating-heighthead-gap/

when i plugged it in it made a clicking sound

Probably the infamous "Click of Death". Unless it contains irreplaceble data, use the drive as a paper weight or door stop.
https://www.datarecoveryspecialists.co.uk/blog/the-hard-drive-click-of-death