When a hard disk drive starts to click, it's a sign of impending doom. It can happen at the most inconvenient times. During a save operation, while opening a file, or when you start the computer. It happens, for the most part, without warning and unless you are sensitive to the noises that emanate from your computer it will take you by surprise. In the majority of cases it means the drive has failed completely and that click might as well be the sound of a lock engaging. Your data is now locked in the dungeon of failed hardware. Permanently encased in a dead hard drive.
On the semi-bright side, a click from a hard drive can sometimes be a warning. Taken to heart and should it occur while the OS is still up, you might still have a chance to backup your data. Miss the opportunity and you might just kiss your data goodbye. Once it happens, a data recovery service can usually recover data from the Click of Death. This type of hard drive failure is usually beyond the capabilities of a typical end-user to recover.
Platter Damage
When the recording surface(s) become damaged due to physical contact of the head bearing with the platters, drives can make this dreadful noise. The noise is indicative of the heads repeatedly attempting to read damaged areas of the media (a.k.a. retries). Physical media damage on a hard drive is akin to a pothole in a roadway without the possibility of repair. The more tires that pass through the pothole the larger the hole becomes. If platter damage has occurred the drive will only get worse with attempts to run commercial data recovery software. Eventually becoming completely unrecoverable even by the most capable data recovery shop.
PCB Damage
It's possible the electronic components of the drive have failed or circuits have fried on the PCB. While it's not the most likely cause, replacing the PCB can fix the problem. It should be noted that replacing a PCB on a hard drive is not a simple as it sounds. Locating a PCB that is an exact match can often be difficult, yet is required to successfully swamp the boards. More information about replacing a hard drive PCB is located at http://www.iswamp.com/data-recovery/hard-drive-repair-pcb-11.php .
Microcode Damage
Modern hard drives utilize programmable read-only memory (PROM) chips and tracks on the hard drive, sometimes referred to as maintenance tracks, to store information required by the drive to operate properly. Damage to one or both of these areas will cause the Click of Death. Unfortunately, commercial data recovery software and other methods available “in the wild” are unable to repair such damage. The only real course of action in this case is to employ a data recovery firm to extract the data from the drive. They have the proprietary software and hardware techniques to successfully pull data from a drive with microcode damage.
Data Loss is Preventable
If you're an end-user or SMB there is no one else to rely on to ensure the safety of your data. A backup system including software tends to be a lot cheaper than employing the services of a data recovery firm. It's been said that “People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan”. Hard drives fail, plan on it! Many people have purchased backup systems, planned proper backup routines yet fail to execute or worse fail to test the backup system by running a test restore to ensure the system works properly and as expected. Make backups part of your computing routine.
