Is my external hard drive dying?

March 28, 2005 11:06 AM

I have a hard drive in an external enclosure. Recently, it (sometimes) has been making disturbing noises. Is my hard drive dying, or is it my enclosure?

Normally when I turn on my hard drive, I hear the drive spin up, there is a click (not sure what this is), and then I hear the drive reading data.

Recently, it spins up, clicks, spins up again (I guess it loses some but not all spin after the click), clicks again, etc. It kind of reminds me of a broken record. This doesn't always happen, but when it does I turn off the drive, so I don't know how long it would keep spinning and clicking. Everything works fine after a couple of tries.

Is the problem with my hard drive or with my enclosure?

posted by TheIrreverend to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

back it up now.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:08 AM on March 28, 2005

(sorry, maybe that was a silly post. sounds like the head's seeking around on the drive, but i'm no expert. but, as i said, anything worries you about a drive, you want to be backing it up asap. it's horrible when they go.)
posted by andrew cooke at 11:11 AM on March 28, 2005

Yeah, for me a clicking sound was a warning that failure was days away. I'd be willing to bet it's not the enclosure, since the enclosure should have no moving parts.
posted by knave at 11:30 AM on March 28, 2005

Not that this thread needs another warning, but that click is the click of death- please do copy the files from it. The nice thing about this situation is that it's almost certainly the mechanicals of the drive itself failing- if you can get the enclosure open, you can put in a new drive.. and those can be had cheap.
posted by fake at 11:51 AM on March 28, 2005

Response by poster: (the drive is western digital, as per the link)

I'd be willing to bet it's not the enclosure

I just thought that maybe the power supply was somehow faulty, causing the drive to turn on and off, but I guess I was being too hopeful...
posted by TheIrreverend at 12:06 PM on March 28, 2005

Echo the above comments (drive is in dire danger, back up before it's too late). To answer your question about the click, I'm not an engineer, but I've watched a drive operate through a window, and the click is the read/write head flipping from rest position to the data section of the platter. There is a little plastic strip just above the platter that engages a catch that blocks the head from moving to the data section unless te strip has been moved a certain amount, and it appears that it is moved by air currents coming from the splinning platter, in which case I assume it is there to prevent the heads moving to the data section of the platter if the platter is not spinning fast enough. (If the platter is not spinning fast enough, my understanding is that the heads might contact the platter due to insufficient air currant to float them, and thus damage the surface). If the strip is not sufficiently moved, the click will occur as normal, but the heads hit the restraining catch instead of going to the data section, and so remain in the rest section, then a few seconds later (giving the platter more time to spin up) they try to move again.

So, assuming my interpretations of the workings are not too far off, my guess would be that something is failing in the motor that spins up the platter, or in the platter bearings, such that it is having difficulty getting up to speed. Back it up immediately.

If it happens on another drive in the same enclosure, it would suggest that the power supply is faulty, supplying insufficient power to handle the spike in demand caused by spin-up. But I think the inevitable impending doom of your drive is the far far more likely scenario. Don't use it again until you can back up.
posted by -harlequin- at 12:08 PM on March 28, 2005

Find one of those drive speed test utilities that can write a load of data to the drive and time reading it back. If you get widely varying times for the reading-back part, and you can hear more clicks each time you get a slow result, that means the drive is hard is having trouble reading itself and you should get a new one.

(You probably need to get a new drive whatever happens, but this should prove it to yourself)
posted by cillit bang at 12:12 PM on March 28, 2005

Run SMART monitoring on the drive (I have a favorite, but I don't have it here at work). Just look for "SMART monitoring windows" or somesuch. It will tell you if the drive is experiencing mass read errors.
Back up the data now!
You should be able to open up the external enclosure fairly easily and just replace the HDD. More than likely it's a standard off-the-shelf unit, since that's the cheapest way to go.
I'm not quite sure what's causing the clicking, but the drive will probably die soon. (I've had two that suffered similar fates. The old 40GB drives seemed to be the worst.)

Not that this thread needs another warning, but that click is the click of death- please do copy the files from it.
posted by fake at 11:51 AM PST on March 28

Sorry to say that the Click of Death refers to ZIP/JAZ drives, not HDD.
posted by defcom1 at 12:17 PM on March 28, 2005

Actually reading the question again, it might be the fan. Try using the drive while the clicking is going on (if it is the drive, you shouldn't be able to use it, or it will be very slow).
posted by cillit bang at 12:20 PM on March 28, 2005

Re SMART monitoring: I use HDD Health [Windows only] to monitor my drives. It's freeware.

But I'm not sure if you can monitor drives via USB or FireWire. I think it might be only be for internal IDE drives.
posted by exhilaration at 1:09 PM on March 28, 2005

defcom1, you're right that the term originated with the Zip and Jaz drives, but it's extended to HDDs, too. Google it and see how often you can get comments about Quantum, Seagate, Maxtor, etc.

Completely offtopic: I remain to this day astounded that Iomega actually offered a product called the Clik! drive, *after* the CoD scandal erupted. What were they thinking?

Good luck, Irreverend! I just had to install a new hard drive in my iMac G4 to address pretty much the same situation.
posted by kimota at 2:17 PM on March 28, 2005

defcom1, I'm aware of the IOMEGA scandal- I meant "click of death" in a very literal way.
It is the clicking sound a hard drive makes when it is dying (as other posters noted above). Perhaps "sound/thunk/clack/whatever of death" would be better?

I've had several drives die this way- all 40gb Maxtor drives, if anybody is interested.

Anyhow, I don't have much else to contribute, except that you shouldn't do ANY tests on the drive before you back up the goods. Tests can destroy an on-the-edge hard drive.
posted by fake at 2:27 PM on March 28, 2005

My external drive does this too every now and then, and it scared the hell out of me at first.

However, I think it may just be that you can actually *hear* the drive, as opposed to the drive in your computer which is covered up by the sound of the case fan, cpu fan.. etc.


That said... back it up if you're really paranoid and defragment the drive, which will cause it to seek less.
posted by o0o0o at 6:42 PM on March 28, 2005

i had a western digital hard drive do this after years of use ... it IS a sure sign of impending toastdom ... it may take some time, but ... back up now ... you never know
posted by pyramid termite at 9:23 PM on March 28, 2005