Strange Noises: Hard Drive Clicking and Clacking

If your hard drive is clacking, clicking, or making other strange noises, immediate action should be taken. Specifically: Turn off the external hard drive or computer with the internal hard drive and disconnect it from the power supply! Even if the hard drive is still being recognized, a mechanical defect may be present. To recover your data, you should avoid further read/write operations and contact a professional data recovery specialist.

2022-09-23 · Lars Müller, Head of Data Recovery Lab

If your hard drive is clacking, clicking, or making other strange noises, immediate action should be taken. Specifically: Turn off the external hard drive or computer with the internal hard drive and disconnect it from the power supply! Even if the hard drive is still being recognized, a mechanical defect may be present. To recover your data, you should avoid further read/write operations and contact a professional data recovery specialist.

Causes of Clacking Noises

Data recovery in professional cleanroom laboratory

The cause of unusual noises is not always clear-cut. For a comprehensive overview, see our page on symptoms of a defective hard drive. Often, causes can chain together and trigger multiple types of damage to the hard drive simultaneously.

Defective Signal Amplifier

Clacking or clicking noises can be caused, among other things, by a faulty signal amplifier in the HDD.

Defective VCM Driver

If the internal VCM driver of the hard drive is damaged, the read/write unit of the HDD may react in an uncontrolled manner. The result: clacking or otherwise unusual noises.

Drive Vibration or Shock

If the hard drive experiences a shock or vibration (during operation), contact between the read head and the magnetic platter can occur (known as a head crash). This also results in clicking/clacking noises.

Excessive Read/Write Operations

When the physical hard drive storage is full or nearly full, the hard drive must perform a very high number of read and write operations. This can also produce clacking/clicking noises.

Material Wear

In very old drives, material wear can be the cause of defective read heads and/or magnetic platters, and thus responsible for the "strange noises" and the imminent data loss.

Bad Sectors

If the read/write head repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempts to access bad sectors, the typical clacking noises also occur.

Electrostatic Discharge

A common cause of clicking noises from a hard drive can be electrostatic discharge. When the read head no longer receives return channel data, it searches the magnetic platter from the inner to the outer edge. In doing so, the read head repeatedly strikes the spindle motor, producing the clicking/clacking sound.

Professionelle Diagnose – kein Risiko

Wir analysieren Ihren Datenträger kostenlos. Kosten entstehen nur bei erfolgreicher Datenrettung.

0800-881 12 25 Request Recovery Cost Estimate

Can the Hard Drive Be Repaired?

Opened hard drive with read-write head and magnetic platter

We strongly advise against attempting to repair the hard drive yourself. While data recovery with free recovery tools can work for logical defects, such programs often cause even greater damage when dealing with mechanical defects (which is usually the case with clacking/clicking or an unrecognized hard drive). Read/write operations should be avoided at all costs to protect the HDD components.

You should also not open the hard drive: even the tiniest dust particles can seriously damage defective or still-functioning components. In a professional data recovery lab, the hard drive is repaired and data is subsequently recovered in a dust-protected cleanroom. Learn more about our professional HDD data recovery service.

If your hard drive is making suspicious noises, do not hesitate to seek professional help. An early analysis by specialists can make the difference between successful data recovery and permanent data loss.