Help - Hard Drive Randomly Clicking and Disappearing from Windows Explorer

[Robbie Ride]

Hi all,

I'm experiencing a strange issue with my PC where one of my 1TB Hard Drives randomly clicks and disappears from Windows Explorer. I can read and write data to it without issues until it disappears from Explorer and the only way to get the Hard Drive to reappear it to reboot the computer.

I am at a loss as to what is causing the issue, but i don't think the hard drive is about to fail as i dont get any issues within Windows when acessing my data. I have used SeaTools to scan the drive for issues and it seems fine.

Could it be a faulty SATA or Power Cable that is casuing the issue?

[+devHead Subscriber²]

Well, I can say from experience that if you hear clicking from your hard drive, it's probably on the verge of mechanical failure. As soon as you get access to it, move your files off of it onto another drive. My 2 TB did something similar and at first I could read and write, but after a few weeks, I started having errors on it and the clicking got more frequent. Your best bet is move stuff off of it and then test your theories with different cables and connections on your motherboard. Best bet is to use the same cable on that drive on other drives and the same port on your board to see if that is the problem. But almost always if you hear a drive clicking, it's on the verge of death.

[Robbie Ride]

The clicking started a few days ago but it's not constant, it could happen one minute and stop the next, from late last night until the early hours i was streaming movies from it to another computer to watch and it was fine, as i have said its random.

What i have done at the moment is swap the SATA cable with the one from my BluRay Drive and removed a fan molex connecter that i had placed between the PSU and the HDD and all seems fine just now, i will monitor the situation for a few hours to see if this helps.

[MillionVoltss]

BACK IT UP NOW.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

It's dead Jim.

[Robbie Ride]

Back Up in progress to test drive more but i don't think its dead, i think the problem is the SATA cable.

[articuno1au]

What everyone else said.

Clicking is the devil's play thing >.>

EDIT::

It's unlikely that the cable is the issue. The most likely outcome if that were the case is the drive just disappears from explorer and gets parked by the drive firmware.

There should be no clicking in this scenario. Clicking = mechanical fault as a rule of thumb.

[nyolc8]

Nope. Not the SATA Cable. Two thing could happen: the hard drive will die, or you can re-partition it and maybe it will work nicely. I have an old harddrive that clicked and dissapeared many times, I bought a new one then re-partitioned the old harddrive, and the old one works even now. I'm using osx on that old harddrive and it works perfectly, no clicking, not any problems at all.

So try to re-partition it.

[articuno1au]

Nope. Not the SATA Cable. Two thing could happen: the hard drive will die, or you can re-partition it and maybe it will work nicely. I have an old harddrive that clicked and dissapeared many times, I bought a new one then re-partitioned the old harddrive, and the old one works even now. I'm using osx on that old harddrive and it works perfectly, no clicking, not any problems at all.

So try to re-partition it.

My objection to this is you have no idea which outcome will be the answer.

I take a very black and white approach to this. Once a drive starts clicking, it's out.

[Robbie Ride]

then why is it working fine after i changed the SATA cable and removed the fan connector from the same cable?

[articuno1au]

You were running a fan off a SATA power cable?

WUT!?

[butilikethecookie]

Screw everything else.

Clicking=Time to get new drive

Back it up now!

[Robbie Ride]

You were running a fan off a SATA power cable?

WUT!?

it was set up like this

PSU 4-Pin Molex (female) > Fan 4-Pin Twin Molex (male and female) > Sata 4-Pin Molex (male)

[articuno1au]

Oh.. Well in that case it's possible there was a power supply issue.

When you say SATA cable, people are always going to think of the data cable.

The clicking could be caused by insufficient voltage reaching components.

[streetw0lf]

It's the click of death. Backup now and replace drive.

[Robbie Ride]

Oh.. Well in that case it's possible there was a power supply issue.

When you say SATA cable, people are always going to think of the data cable.

The clicking could be caused by insufficient voltage reaching components.

Yeah thats what i was thinking i removed the fan from between the PSU and HDD and changed the Sata (data) cable.

[articuno1au]

Baha.. I like that people are all still saying the same thing :p

Clicking = Death. First rule of harddrives :p I'd be backing that drive up regularly I think >.>

[nyolc8]

My objection to this is you have no idea which outcome will be the answer.

I take a very black and white approach to this. Once a drive starts clicking, it's out.

It started to clicking for me... It clicked everyday, the whole pc hanged, I needed to reset, turn off etc... And when I re-partitioned it, it became perfect, and not a single clicking happened from that. This happened 2 years ago, and the hd works perfectly everyday from then. I'm using it right now too. So no, it's not out. Atleast for me.

[Robbie Ride]

Baha.. I like that people are all still saying the same thing :p

Clicking = Death. First rule of harddrives :p I'd be backing that drive up regularly I think >.>

let me clarify something the clicking is NOT constant but random and usually stops even if data is being read or written to it. Let me also say that the last time i hear it click was on Monday and it started again about an hour ago.

If it were about to fail the clicking would be constant, i would also experience system freezing, data erros and a whole host of other things.

[Robbie Ride]

It started to clicking for me... It clicked everyday, the whole pc hanged, I needed to reset, turn off etc... And when I re-partitioned it, it became perfect, and not a single clicking happened from that. This happened 2 years ago, and the hd works perfectly everyday from then. I'm using it right now too. So no, it's not out. Atleast for me.

Since i have changed the cable there have been no clicks at all, even now that i am transfering around 300GB of data from it. I don't think a randomly clicking drive means its on its way out the door to a tearful goodbye, and i think the issue was the SATA cable, i would love to be proved wrong but i cant see it happening.

[x-scratch]

are you still under warranty ? i had the same problem you are having & i ended up getting a replacement. from the time i placed the request to the day i got the replaced hd was 4 days

i live in the united states they sent the replacement drive out first & as soon as i got the replacement i sent the failing drive out

it only cost me $10.67

[ninja502]

try hirens and use dos tool HDD Regenerator 2011

[Robbie Ride]

try hirens and use dos tool HDD Regenerator 2011

I will give it a try after my data is backed up

are you still under warranty ? i had the same problem you are having & i ended up getting a replacement. from the time i placed the request to the day i got the replaced hd was 4 days

i live in the united states they sent the replacement drive out first & as soon as i got the replacement i sent the failing drive out

it only cost me $10.67

Yeah i think i am still under warranty, i will try a few suggestions if those fail i will RMA the drive

[Hum]

It's dead Jim.

"I'm a doctor, not a Computer whiz." :laugh:

[Tomoko]

try hirens and use dos tool HDD Regenerator 2011

All that does is try to recover data from damaged sectors and then marks them as bad. It can be helpful in file recovery but it won't save your drive. Back up everything and pull its life support plug, it's done. Even if it works for a while after running that utility, bad sectors have a tendency to spread. The drive should never be trusted again.