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Does a hard drive clicking always mean doom?

B

BigToque

Lifer
I bought a 300gb drive a few years ago (3 years tops), but I've been using it in an external usb enclosure and is only powered on for a couple hours at a time and used maybe once a month or so.

I'm really surprised that it's started to click with so little use.

The SMART info provided by HDTune says the drive is alright.

I was thinking the problem was the enclosure, so I connected it right to my computer but I still get the odd clicking noise.

Time to just get a new drive?
 
one of my external hdds was making those clicking noises... still works, but several files have become corrupted. It also likes to randomly disappear, so that i have to restart that hdd to get windows to see it again.
 
No joke.. heed the warnings above! I've actually had a older harddrive start clicking.... and then a small pin inside droped. Upon further investigation I found out that the clicking was actually that small pin starting to come loose. Worse then nails on a chalkboard!
 
I built a cheap computer for a neighbor two years ago using some second hard parts including refurbed MDT 80GB HDD. I go over every four or five months and do basic maintenance, make sure its getting the important Windows Updates, defrag and scan the drive. It started making some unnerving clickety noises about a year ago, I figured the drive would soon be dead. So I talked them into buying a 30GB external USB HDD for scheduled backups of their stuff. Its still making clickety noises but running fine. Full disk checks with surface scan aren't turning up any bad sectors or recurring file system problems.

But I would never have trusted it. Keep current backups and hard drive failures are only a minor annoyance rather than a potential crisis.
 
The drive shouldn't be trusted if it makes noises. That said I have several drives that you can hear spin down when the power is cut, probably bearing issues, but they still work fine and show no smart errors. Also some drives do a thermal re-calibration that can sound like a click , but is caused by the drive parking the head for just a second while it re-calibrates.

If it is clicking a lot it could be heat issues. The hotter the drive gets the more it has to calibrate.
 
I had a Seagate 320 GB 7200.10 HD.
It started clicking a lot after 2 years of use, quietly on the inner part of the plates, and painfully loud when on the outer part of the plates. That same day I bought a new HD.
That HD is still somewhere in a box. I wish I could trust having 300 GB of my stuff in there, but I just can't.
SMART tests and sector analysis come out OK though.
 
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