Hard Drive Clicking - A Complete Beginner's Guide

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Hard drive clicking causes: damaged firmware, failed & misalignment of heads. This user guide shows you how to identify, prevent & fix hard drive clicking!

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Unlike humans, machines cannot tell us what’s wrong with them.

The problems in their internal parts arise in various forms like hard drive clicking (a.ka. Click of death) and hard drive short DST check failed. This out of the ordinary performance means you need to take a closer look at your hard drive.

Hard drive clicking noise has a technical explanation behind it.

To fully understand a clicking hard drive, you must know how does a hard drive work:

It has a disk read/write head in every system which hovers over the platter of the hard drive. It quickly scans the platter when reading or adding data. This can be anything from images, videos, documents, etc.

When the platter’s design gets damaged, it won’t perform the same way and the disk head reaches the end of the damaged platter, the clicking noises come up. When it occurs regularly, it will damage the read/write head, too. Therefore, your hard drive makes a clicking sound.

But what causes the damages on the platter?

We shall discuss this in the next section!

Why Is My Hard Drive Clicking?

The potential causes of hard drive clicking include problems of the magnetic parts, insufficient power supply, corrupt service area, and misaligned HGA.

Defective magnetic parts - Odd sounds can be associated to the head being bad or overused. A bad HDD head is associated with newly purchased hard drives already making the clicking noise. This is a manufacturer's defect and can be replaced depending on your circumstances.
Aged magnetic parts - Hard drive clicking is also because of the degrading health of its parts with years of usage. Good quality HDDs can last up to 5 years. But continuous usage for 1-2 years ages the device rapidly.
Insufficient supply of power - When your computer is plugged directly to the power source together with other devices, low power voltage is a possibility. Low voltage can cause hard drive clicking from time to time.
Power surge - In General, the fluctuation of supply of power is bad for your HDD's health. And a power surge can shorten the life of your hard drive dramatically. It directly affects the HSA and the PCB inside the HDD - the parts that create the clicking sound!
Bad Modules - Bad modules create hard drive clicking sound. And it happens because of a corrupt Service Area of a hard disk drive. To fix this requires a hard drive recovery service.
Misaligned HGA (Head Gimbal Assembly) - On rare occasions that your hard drive experiences shock, like knocking it off your hand. There's a good chance your HGA gets misaligned and your Head Stack Assembly is compromised. When this happens check HDD health right away to secure your data.

We want to avoid hard drive failure at all costs. That is why understanding, and knowing, the potential causes of hard drive clicking are crucial.

In worse case that you lose data in the process, calling an expert in data recovery services is the best logical choice!

Precautionary Steps When Your Hard Drive Starts Makes Clicking Noises

Back-Up Your Data Files

Before anything else, make it a point to have a back up of the important files stored on your hard drive immediately. Sometimes the hard drive clicking sound could be the result of a virus, which can potentially put your files at risk of getting deleted.

Give it a Quick Run Through on a Diagnostic Software

There is plenty of hardware diagnostic software available online for a hard drive clicking fix. You can install them for free like Seagate Seatools, HDD Scan, HD Tune, and more. Once you’ve found the right software for you, close all your other programs while running diagnostic for optimal results.

You’ll find the diagnostic software has marked the failing internal areas of your clicking hard drive. Sometimes, when you access a specific data, the hard drive clicking sound happens. Diagnostic software can detect it and allow you to decide on what to do with the problematic data inside your external hard drive.

If you find the internal problem requires advanced diagnosis, you should invest in a paid third-party software to clear up your external drive issues and get rid of the worrisome hard drive clicking noise. A third-party software also allows you a more in-depth look at the problem on hand.

Consider Total External Drive Replacement

Professionals recommend people to completely purchase a new external drive because even if the clicking noise goes away, the diagnostic fix won’t last forever. When there is a hard drive clicking but still works, you shouldn’t rely on its fluctuating condition either.

Replacement is the best solution. It will be expensive since external drives with high memory space is worth a pretty penny, but at least you’ll find peace of mind knowing your data is secured. Find out why our external drive recovery process is #1.

How To Trouble Shoot Hard Drive Clicking Problems?

Here are a few troubleshooting tips you can try when advanced diagnostics didn’t take care of the problem are!

Advance Troubleshooting Tips:

Look into the cable connection you use for your external hard drive. Another reason behind hard drive clicking noise is the connector of your external drive to your computer. You can rule it out by trying different cables to check if you still have the same results.
Rule Out Fragmentation. An external drive can be fragmented when data is not written correctly in your external drive. Thus, resulting in the unwanted external hard drive clicking noise. You can easily solve fragmentation by using a defragmenting program to extend the lifespan of your hard drive.

Again, there are plenty of free defragmenting programs available online for all types of hard drives. All you have to do is research the best fit for your computer.
Check Your Device Drivers. Although uncommon, it’s also possible for a clicking hard drive to happen when you’ve got a faulty device driver on your computer. You should consult a computer technician to replace it immediately. Otherwise, no matter how many times you replace your external hard drives, you’ll always encounter clicking noise problems.

How To Avoid Losing Data Before Hard Drive Crashes?

Now that you’ve successfully solved the issue behind your hard drive clicking sound, you should focus the next step: prevention. You may have gotten lucky the first time around and you’ve managed to save all your data, but in other cases, some external drives require data termination.

A clicking hard drive is more common than you think. With the years of innovation, you’d think someone would’ve invented a way to make hard drives last longer. But for now, we have to do things manually and continue replacements, data back up and repeat it all over again to ensure the safety of our stored data.

To avoid the fuss of a hard drive clicking problem, perform regular backups on your hard drive. When you have this capability in your arsenal, recovering from a hard drive failure is easy. You won’t have to deal with the stress of lost or deleted data. Simply install a new drive and restore your back up, then you’re all set up.

Got a Hard drive data recovery situation? Visit one of our offices near you or call us at +1-888-328-2887

About the Author
Tommy Khamoushi, Data Recovery Expert

Tommy Khamoushi is an IACRB-certified Data Recovery Engineer and a Certified Forensic Computer Investigator. He has more than 20 years of experience in data recovery including providing technical support for the House of Representatives.

Tommy leads a team of data recovery engineers and experts at TTR Data Recovery to recover highly sensitive data for government agencies like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and enterprise businesses using advanced and proprietary techniques and processes.

Connect with Tommy on LinkedIn.