Seagate External HDD Clicking - But not dying (yet)...

[crustation]

Hi all, just wondering if someone could help me figure out why my Seagate 1TB external HDD is making an awful clicking noise, yet continuing to work. I have bought a new 2TB WD external drive and am in the process of transferring everything from the seagate to the WD, but it seems the seagate is doing fine at this. Also, there is no clicking noise when transferring data, only when it initially spins up with windows starting. I have noticed that it can take a long time to register in the computer folder when starting up, but seems to do fine once this has happened.
If anyone could tell me why a drive might click but not fail I would be very appreciative. Of course there is also the possibility that it is about to fail but just hasn't happened yet. If it is going to fail I want it to happen soon (before warranty runs out!).
Thanks for any info you guys can give.

 

[C1]

The drive may be having a hard time reading sector zero. Oddly enough, I was messing around with a new 2TB Hitachi the other day trying different types of partition formatting and the same thing happened. I also thought that the drive went bad.

Advice would be to back up the drive, clear the partition (using something like MiniTool) and reformat. There's an excellent chance that the drive is okay but just has some trash in sector zero. Another possibility that is simpler is to try to repair the MFT. Try first a chkdsk /F and see what happens.

 

[crustation]

Thanks for the tip. Will give that a shot and get back to you on how it went.

 

[crustation]

Well that seems to have done it! Thanks for your help. though in a way I was kind of hoping it would die so I could get warranty on it, now I have a lot more storage than I was anticipating I would!
Thanks again.

 

[Russwinters]

I would be weary using the drive further, it is liable to fail at any time.

Keep it backed up, or use it for something unimportant.


Regards,