What’s Clicking?

Computer users first noticed the clicking sound as related to hard drive failure in the 1990’s. While there are many possible causes, a hard drive clicking noise often results from the defective movement of the disk’s read-write actuator. During regular use, a disk head moves smoothly to track data on a disk. If these movements become erratic and unexpected, the disk controller tries to reset its position by bumping back to the home position repeatedly. This bumping causes an audible “click” and the noise will continue as the process repeats itself. There are several reasons a hard drive makes a clicking sound. In older hard drives, the clicking noise is usually related to a problem with the disk head. In newer models, however, clicking could be the result of either a software or hardware problem. In either case, the data from a clicking hard drive can be recovered.

Causes of Clicking

The type of clicking helps experienced hard drive recovery technicians know which solutions to pursue based on the probable cause of the problem. Try your ear at the different hard drive failure sounds. The type of hard drive clicking helps experienced recovery technicians know which solutions to pursue based on the probable cause of the problem. They aren’t easy to differentiate but we do understand the major causes. There are several likely causes of a clicking hard drive:
  • Physical damage to a hard drive
    • A hard disk failure may occur due to external factors such as exposure to fire, water or high magnetic fields, or suffering a sharp impact or environmental contamination, all of which can lead to a head crash.
    • A hard drive has moving parts, and during the course of normal operation, these parts will experience normal wear and tear, resulting in a natural failure and clicking noise.
  • Insufficient Power
    • Defective PSU (Power Supply Unit) could lead to creating noise on the hard drive
  • Damaged / Glitching PCB
    • Power surges can damage both the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and the HSA (Head Stack Assembly)
  • Service Area (SA) Issues
    • The Service Area, which stores manufacturer specific data required for HDD operation. It could become corrupted/damaged through errors during module reading or bad sectors that result in an inability to translate the information on the drive.
  • Read/Write Heads Misalignment
    • Components such as the heads or spindle arms are out of line if the hard drive is dropped or handled roughly.
  • Weak/Damaged Heads

How to Fix Your Clicking Hard Drive

There are a few simple fixes if your hard drive is making noises. First, ensure your hard drive is getting enough power. A single socket can be overwhelmed if several devices are plugged in at once so plug your hard drive directly into a single power source. If that doesn’t work, check to see if those cables are intended for that hard drive and computer or replace them if necessary. If the drive is still clicking, there will be a small window of time to back up your data. Your best chance at saving your data is to immediately complete a full backup. These are straightforward troubleshooting options that will give you the best chance at fixing the hard drive issue and recovering data from your hard drive.

Myths About Recovering a Hard Drive With a Clicking Sound

  • Using data recovery software to obtain the files and transfer them to a new drive.
    • In most cases, a clicking hard drive indicates a physical or mechanical issue with the drive. Software will not work in this instance and continuing to operate the drive can cause platter damage and only make data recovery more difficult
  • Putting your hard drive in the freezer to constrict the mechanics and free up disk space
    • This outdated technique will only cause corrosion on the platters and electrical components when the water vapor inside the drive freezes and is then thawed
  • Replacing a Control Board inside the hard drive
    • This may only work for an electrical failure, but is a lot more in depth than just swapping out the controller board. Also a clicking hard drive is very rarely ever caused by a PCB or controller board.
  • Opening the drive to attempt a recovery or replace heads
    • NOTE: We do not recommend this method. Opening the drive to repair read/write heads requires a Cleanroom facility. Without this environment, dust will settle on the drive platters, making the recovery situation much harder or damaging the information beyond recovery.
    • Recovering data from a clicking hard drive requires expertise, proper tools, and appropriate hardware and software to retrieve the information




Hard Disk Making Clicking Noises and Inaccessible, How Do I Recover My Files?


Nowadays, with the increasing development of technology; hard drives are also improving, including their storage capacity, speed, compact size, etc. However, due to the higher frequency of usage, these storage drives show issues at times and clicking noise is included as one of those major issues.

Normally, these computer storage drives are quiet and steady, but in case of any physical damages or logical corruption, they can begin to make noise.

There are a number of different hard drive clicking sounds with different reasons. Usually, the older hard drives (whether they are external or internal) have the tendency to create clicking sounds, but when it comes to a new hard drive there could be different causes.

Some type of clicking noise are due to software or driver issues, some of them due to hardware issues, and sometimes due to mechanical faults of the hard drive. The users must be able to differentiate normal noises from detrimental or abnormal noises.

In case your hard drive is making noises, you should identify it immediately and try to recover data from this clicking hard drive. Usually, when a hard drive starts making a clicking noise and there is a logical reason behind it, and subsequently it will not be recognized by the operating system after system restart. At this time you should check whether your hard drive is in working state or dead due to any physical damages.

If there is any logical reason then it can surely be recovered with the help of a data recovery software.

Most of the times there are four probable causes for clicking noise of a hard drive:

  1. The insufficient power supply is a very common cause of noise in the hard drive. It mostly happens when you have connected multiple devices (including the HDD) to a single port.
  2. Physical depreciation of the hard drive which results from either simple issues or damage such as a physical shock or trauma.
  3. A hard drive may be failed due to the faulty data cables, or incorrect drivers installed.
  4. A crashed hard drive.

Subsequent fixes people have used to recover data from clicking hard drive

  1. Check whether the hard drive is getting enough power or not. You can do it by plugging the power adapter directly into the power supply. In case it is engaged with multiple devices plugged into it, then you can connect the drive to a different power outlet.
  2. Replace the data cable with the new one and turn on the drive. Now, if it does not make any noise, then the data cable might be faulty.
  3. In case the drive still makes noises, then there is a high possibility the drive is failing and needs to be replaced.

If your hard drive is not dead and is recognized by the BIOS, but still inaccessible, then you should surely consider a reliable data recovery tool in order to recover your complete data.

There are plenty of data recovery software available which are capable to recover from noisy hard drives. However, all data recovery tools are not compatible with every type of hard drive, therefore you should be sure about the tool, else you can end up losing all of the data stored on your hard drive.

Here, we have mentioned about a reliable data recovery software that will surely work and retrieve your hard drive’s data. Stellar Data Recovery Professional is a proficient utility in order to restore lost, deleted or formatted hard drive data in few clicks. This professional recovery software is capable of recovering inaccessible data from any type of external or internal storage media.


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