[Solved]How to Fix Clicking Hard Drive and recover data from it

Last Updated on December 8, 2020 by Jason Ben

When your hard drive is making sound and it annoys you, you have to pay close attention to it, since persistent clicking noise sometimes means the imminent arrival of the death of your hard disk, which valid both for internal hard disk drive and external hard drive.

So, what’s hard drive clicking and Why?

To start the explanation, we should know what is a normal hard drive made of. Substantially the construction of hard disk [hard drive] is simple. It composed of two, three of more platters of magnetic oxide and an actuator arm mounted on the end of which there is a magnetic read/write head. The actuator arm is vibrated by the head actuator which can move an arm at a very fast speed. As for the read/write head, it is designated to touch the platter and read data from the platter or write data down on it.

The clicking sound usually is caused by faulty movement of the disk’s read-write actuator. When the hard drive encounter with some problems, the head actuator moves the arms rapidly back to the home position repetitively which makes a clicking sound.

There are many causes of a clicking hard drive, they are listed but nor limited as below:

1. A failed hard drive
2. Physical damage to hard drive
3. Insufficient power for the drive to fully spin up
4. The data cable is malfunctioning, or mismatched

First you should do some test to identify the accurate cause before fixing the hard drive. Please follow the steps below to check a hard drive for problem:

Step 1: Shut down your computer.

Step 2: Disconnect the data cable from the hard drive with keeping the power cable.

Step 3: Turn on the computer. If the clicking sound is gone, then just replace the cable. If the problem come back then it could be a system hardware issue.

if the clicking sound hasn’t gone you need to check if your hard drive is getting sufficient power. Please note that a single socket can exceed the power load with two or more devices are plugged in. You can try to plug a hard drive directly into a single source of power.

The clicking sound persists? you can make a judgment that the hard drive is dying and you have little time to save your data. PLEASE NEVER OPEN THE HARD DRIVE LID FOR SELF REPAIR unless you are a hard drive expert.

How to differentiate the causes by listening to the click sound

Different causes of clicking will generate different sounds of clicking. Below is a list of typical noises of a faulty hard disk drives. You can differentiate the causes by listening to the sound. They might vary slightly so you have to pay close attention and listen to them in a silent room.

So how to backup data from the clicking hard drive

Since imminent death of the hard drive is raising towards you, you must back up your data to another hard drive immediately. However, faulty hard drive often leads to data loss, so, it is a more reasonable action for you to scan the lost data before migrating all data out.

How to Recover Data from Clicking Hard Drive

In the instruction, you will need to install a data recovery software on your computer which can scan out all your lost data from the faulty clicking hard disk drive.

Step 1: Download and Install Data Recovery on your computer

Step 2: Launch the program and click on Data Recover Module

Step 3: Check all files type and put a tick before the label of the hard drive that is making noise

Step 4: Click Scan to start the retrieval process and be patience since it might take a while. AND please don’t use your computer during the process for preventing more data loss.

After the scanning just select those files that you need and recover them to your pc then you are ready to migrate all data to another hard drive.

Finally, please note that then a hard drive is clicking don’t expect a fluke and replace a hard drive as soon as possible.

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