[SOLVED] Wester Digital 500GB Clicking Sound

kbidols

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Hi, my 500 GB WD HDD seems to be having a problem all of a sudden. It's making a clicking noise that I'm unfamiliar with. By looking online, I found several examples of WD clicking sounds but nothing like mine whatsoever.
Examples can be found on these 2 websites:

  1. https://hetmanrecovery.com/recovery_news/identifying-hdd-noise-problems.htm
  2. https://acsdata.com/why-is-my-hard-drive-clicking/

Here's what mine sounds like (you might have to turn up your volume):

HDD CLICKING

Sorry for the low quality recording as it was done only with my phone, but I hope it's clear enough. To me it sounds like a running train (I don't know if this might help clear things up or not).

The drive is installed on a Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. G31M-S2C (Socket 775) mobo with a Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz processor. I have a CX750M Corsair PSU. There's 3 other WD HDD which are working just fine.

The drive itself won't show in BIOS. It has no OS in it. However it has very important files that I once backed up years ago, but unfortunately the backup drive also died a couple of years ago. So, at this point I do not have any backups whatsoever anymore. I have tried switching ports and cables but it just makes it worst. When I switch the port, the main HDD with the OS will not show as well. When I just pull out the E-SATA cable completely off the mobo, it's there again and I can boot to windows normally. Through disk management, I can see the other 3 HDD, but not the faulty one.

I regularly check all of my HDD using Speccy once a month so that I know if anything is going wrong. As far as I can remember, last month everything showed up as GOOD. Temperatures are fairly normal around 45°C to 54°C.

I know at this point that a clicking HDD means software recovery method won't help. I've had plenty of drive going like that for years. I just would like to know at what state my HDD is exactly at. It would be very nice if someone can actually find me a fix/solution to this. Please do try to help as I desperately need to recover the data.

Let me know if you need more details.

Thank you.
 
Solution
That’s why if I’m not gonna be using a disk much I set it to turn off after a min or two to preserve it. That can be found in windows power management. As far as your drive goes you can try giving it a couple light taps to the side I had to do that with a laptop drive one time and it started working again I’m thinking the head hit the disk or wasn’t coming out of the lock position. Sometimes the electro magnets can stick
Often, that repeated power OFF power ON can bring along an earlier death.
A sample size of one is irrelevant.

All drives die, eventually. All of them.
Backups of your data is the key.

86zx

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That’s why if I’m not gonna be using a disk much I set it to turn off after a min or two to preserve it. That can be found in windows power management. As far as your drive goes you can try giving it a couple light taps to the side I had to do that with a laptop drive one time and it started working again I’m thinking the head hit the disk or wasn’t coming out of the lock position. Sometimes the electro magnets can stick
 

USAFRet

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That’s why if I’m not gonna be using a disk much I set it to turn off after a min or two to preserve it. That can be found in windows power management. As far as your drive goes you can try giving it a couple light taps to the side I had to do that with a laptop drive one time and it started working again I’m thinking the head hit the disk or wasn’t coming out of the lock position. Sometimes the electro magnets can stick
Often, that repeated power OFF power ON can bring along an earlier death.
A sample size of one is irrelevant.

All drives die, eventually. All of them.
Backups of your data is the key.
 
Solution

86zx

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Nov 1, 2019
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Often, that repeated power OFF power ON can bring along an earlier death.
A sample size of one is irrelevant.

All drives die, eventually. All of them.
Backups of your data is the key.
If it was a brushed motor I would agree with you but that’s not the case. The main points of failure is bearings and heads crashing. I do agree backing up data on tape or solid state media is the way to go though
 

86zx

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If it’s not super critical and you don’t want to spend tons of money on data recovery you can get a known working drive that’s the same model and swap the platters but that’s only if you really know what your doing I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for someone who isn’t very mechanically inclined and isn’t afraid of failure
 

kbidols

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Thank you all for the kind replies. I appreciate all of your inputs. Unfortunately, there are lots of files that I need back this time. If only my backup did not die as well, I would have let this one go.

I have since unplug the power and E-SATA cable just to make sure it won't try to spin unnecessarily. However, I will keep on waiting just in case anyone else have any other input that might. help.
 

kbidols

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Is there data on this that you absolutely need?
(if so, why wasn't there a backup?)

Is it still under warranty?
Yes, there are quite a lot of data that I absolutely need. The backup died a couple of years ago, and I haven't had the chance to purchase another drive to back it up again.

It is quite an old drive, I believe around 10 years now. Surely wear and tear means it's gotta come to an end at some point, but at least I want to know if there is a slight chance for me to access it for backup until it eventually dies forever.
 

RolandJS

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High-quality places such as Recovery Force or Data Medics definitely will be the expensive option, agreed! Grape-vine indicates R-TT R-Studio, the terribly expensive PC 3000[?], and other low price and high sky price programs have been tried -- however, success and failure reports abound. I wish I knew a guaranteed DIY solution.
 

RolandJS

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"The backup died a couple of years ago, and I haven't had the chance to purchase another drive to back it up again." I understand that in many places, computer hardware is rather expensive and not always easy to get. Is that the case in your area?
 

kbidols

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"The backup died a couple of years ago, and I haven't had the chance to purchase another drive to back it up again." I understand that in many places, computer hardware is rather expensive and not always easy to get. Is that the case in your area?
I wouldn't say expensive but HDD services is rather difficult to find. Besides, I'm sure not many people would want to risk repairing a HDD these days as it is very risky.
 

kbidols

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Okay, an update on this topic.

I bought a SATA to USB connector and plug-it in along with the 12v power adaptor. The drive is finally detectable. Unfortunately it has become a RAW drive under a different name/letter assigned. In this case it became "Local Disk I" from previously named "Local Disk F". I found this out by running chkdsk through command prompt.

Through looking online I found out that there is a chance that RAW drive can be recovered and that one of the cause is power outage. Yes, I've had several power outage in recent years, where I live. So, I'm guessing that is most likely the problem.

Now, so far I have used 3 different software to try scanning and recover whatever I can. Remember, the drive is now named "Local Disk I".

1. Recuva: It took me 2 full days with no progress further than 74% and never getting into stage 2 of the scan. (No screenshot)

2. Hetman Partition Recovery 3.0: It has also been running for a full 2 days with no progress further than what is shown in the screenshot below.



3. Easeus Data Recovery Wizard 13: Same 2 full days of scanning and it seems to stop at 198.78 GB of file. I tried to recover an image file that I got off the web, 118.76 KB in size and it won't ever finish the recovery process. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take a screenshot of this one.

So basically, I have been trying the software recovery method with no luck so far.

MY QUESTION IS:
Is it actually possible to recover a RAW drive at all? Or is there any other way to at least make the drive accessible so that I can copy the files?