Question HDD not vibrating, but clicking

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ar_0

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Aug 12, 2015
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Hello,
I have an 8 year old 1TB WD Green HDD. It stopped working. I have no problem with replacing it, but I just want to know what the symptoms could mean. It appears that the disks don't spin at all since there's no vibration, but I can hear a faint clicking sound about every half a second. I've had a head crash before and I know that in that case the data isn't recoverable. I just want to make sure this is not the same thing.

Any ideas? Thanks.
 
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Go through the link Darkbreeze posted. Being 8 years old it's not surprising for a drive to fail.

Can you record the clicking sound, upload the file somewhere like Google Drive or Dropbox and post a link here?

A clicking is usually the sign of failure, head/actuator stuck. If the surface is not actually scratched by the head 'crashing' and coming in direct contact the data might be recoverable; only by professionals with the proper knowhow and tools, at a price. If you really need the data you should check around with those and ask for quotes.
 
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Satan-IR said:
Go through the link Darkbreeze posted. Being 8 years old it's not surprising for a drive to fail.

Can you record the clicking sound, upload the file somewhere like Google Drive or Dropbox and post a link here?

A clicking is usually the sign of failure, head/actuator stuck. If the surface is not actually scratched by the head 'crashing' and coming in direct contact the data might be recoverable; only by professionals with the proper knowhow and tools, at a price. If you really need the data you should check around with those and ask for quotes.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'll try to record the sound. In the mean time, I'm just waiting for the data recovery people to answer my calls.
 
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The "data recovery people", the ones who are really legitimate, would answer you call posthaste. And they are not cheap. If somebody tells you it going to cost less than 1000 dollars to recover the data off your drive (If it's been damaged and must be lab-recovered) then IMO they are not legitimate and should not be trusted.

I've dealt with a good many data recovery operations, with both trustworthy and less savory operations, and I can assure you that unless it is irreplaceable data with a very high personal or business value, it's almost always not worth it. This is exactly why you should ALWAYS have at any given time, two copies of EVERYTHING in two separate locations, if it's important or can't be replaced. Then, it costs very little, pennies by comparison, to recover your data, since all you have to do is replace the faulty drive and copy it back from the other location.

Even if one of those locations is a flash drive or optical disks, always have AT LEAST one extra backup copy of every important file or folder, and two is better.
 
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Darkbreeze said it. That's what I meant by "at a price". It is very expensive and not worth it if you absolutely need the data and it's irreplaceable.

If they take their time to come back they're most probably not professionals worthy of trust.
 
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USAFRet said:
recover your data from the backup you made before this happened.
Click to expand...

Yeah, about that part................



And on another note regarding the data recovery, they are going to want the bulk of the cost up front, and if they can't recover anything in the lab, that is generally not refundable. I've heard people on here claim otherwise, but having been through this with the most reputable recovery labs in the country for clients who are high end private investigators and attorneys, I can tell you that in my experience that simply isn't true. If they recover nothing at all, you still pay, which is another reason why you want an extremely reputable lab, and there are never any guarantees that what they do recover will be of any use to you without ALL of what you lost.
 
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The drive isn't spinning and therefor the controller on it isn't reading data so it keeps retrying. The clicking is the heads returning to home and then back out to the platter to try and read again.

Whats the whole model# of the drive from the label?
 
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Sure, do that, if you like throwing money away. Any company that claims they can do a clean room recovery for under 1000 dollars is flat out lying to you, and is a scam. And if the recovery doesn't require clean room services, then it's probably something you can do yourself and not need to pay 300 dollars for.

Have YOU sent them drives that were non-functional and had them successfully recovery all your data for 300 bucks? Not only do I seriously doubt it, I guarantee you haven't. I'm not saying they are not offering that service or that there is no value to what they DO offer, but it's not what it looks like on the surface, guaranteed.

If you can your data back for that price, that's wonderful, but I'm skeptical to the point of 100% disbelief after having dealt MANY times with three of the four top labs in the US who have clean room classifications far beyond the basic class 100 clean room certification. I'm sure there are others and who knows, perhaps things have changed and you can get your data recovered at a yard sale these days, which would be great.
 
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