Hard disk platters are coated with metal alloys and burnished, giving them a mirror shine.Ī healthy set of hard drive platters is free of dust and debris, making the platters perfect mirrors. Kirk found that something peculiar on the hard disk platters. Western Digital HDD Repair EvaluationĪs soon as the clicking Western Digital hard drive came into our lab, our cleanroom data recovery technician Kirk inspected the drive’s internal components. When a hard drive produces exceptionally loud clicks or grinding noises, it is usually a sign that the read/write heads have suffered a catastrophic failure, and the data storage platters may be at risk. Hard drives can make much nastier noises than these light clicks. (Whether or not the data is there, or makes sense, though, is another story.) The bad news comes when your hard drive decides to give you its best impression of a grandfather clock. They’re a sign that, at the very least, the read/write heads can read data. The heads produce an audible click every time they complete one round-trip across the hard disk platters’ radius. And so they blindly fly back and forth over the firmware sectors. For some reason-usually heads failure-the read/write heads cannot make contact with the firmware. The rhythmic ticking comes from the read/write heads as they fly over the platters. Your hard drive has decided to quit its job as a data storage device and begin a new career as a metronome. When a hard drive fails, it will often produce a rhythmic ticking noise. Our engineers sometimes refer to this as the “happy sound” because it means that the heads have positioned themselves properly over the firmware sectors and made a handshake with the drive’s firmware. (Old Maxtor and Hitachi hard drives especially can make quite a racket, though, even when they are healthy.) When a hard drive’s read/write heads unpark and position themselves above the spinning hard disk platters, a single click usually accompanies the movement. Hard drives are naturally noisy creatures, although most modern ones are relatively quiet. Type of Data Recovered: Pictures and Documents Situation: Drive started clicking and was put in freezer Western Digital HDD Repair Case Study: Winter is Comingĭrive Model: Western Digital WD3200BEVT-60ZCT0

Western digital hdd repair software