HDD click of death

One of my external portable hard drives just started making the clicks of death. About three or four before powering itself down after being plugged in. No critical data on it, was just a load of video files to entertain me back home over the holidays, but it was a nice drive and I would like it back if possible. 5tb, self-encrypting. Anyone ever successfully repaired one before and have some advice? First thing is going to have to be getting the damn plastic shell off, which doesn’t seem possible non_destructively so far.

Better to keep the drive cool as possible and move the data to something else before too late. Since nothing critical is on it best to try to get what you can.

Check to see if the drive is still under warranty! If so get it replaced thru the manufacture!

If not under warranty, your SOL!

It doesn’t recognize at all, but all the data on it is already on my nas back home. I was hoping it might be relatively easy to fix heads that go knocked out of place or something like that. I think I dropped it while packing, but it definitely wasn’t very hard.

Not at all

If you open that drive at your house, your data will be gone forever
dust from the air has static that will destroy the drive
the click is typically the actuator failing read then retrying

It’s a hardware failure

You can try shucking and connecting direct without the interposer, but that’s all

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Can you post the model? Some of these external drives are nothing more than a 2.5" HDD with an enclosure built around it and custom PCB/daughter board that interfaces with it to handle encryption/power/etc.

I’m sure that’s what it is. It’s western digital, don’t know if I’ll be able to get the exact model.

It should be on the devices itself. Should have an FCC sticker on it with all it’s info

Can you provide more details about the age of the drive? How long have you been using it?

I don’t know exactly, many years. Maybe 5? It traveled maybe once or twice per year in that time, otherwise just sat on top of my case. A year or two went unused, since I was locked out of it.

Appreciate the help, but I’m pretty resigned to writing it off with what’s been said. Again, no data is needed from it, just sucks to lose such a nice drive. Even if I get it back, it’s not like I can really ever trust it again. Maybe it’s time to replace it with an external SSD. No real need for that kind of speed, but should be immune to such problems without a head to get knocked around.

You need a new drive

Many years ago I salvaged a drive that was clicking by placing it in the freezer for 24h. The date code indicates it was manufactured in mid-2007 so I likely bought it in 2008. It still lives. If you attempt this, warm it up at room temp after the freezing for about 20 mins to allow any condensation to sublimate.

Interesting. I guess it can’t hurt to try.

Well the freezer thing didn’t work. There was a slight change in that a while after the spin up, click, spin down cycle, windows spat a notification at me that “couldn’t recognize the device you plugged in” which didn’t happen before.

I think it’s an older version of this, but might be the non-“ultra”. 5TB Blue My Passport Ultra | Western Digital

Yep the HDD is borked.

Based on that you should be able to just take a spudger/flat piece of plastice and find a groove on the top or bottom to pop it open. If it has rubber feet on the bottom or top you may have to take those off first and remove some screws.

Tried that already, the way it clamshells together leaves basically no crack to get purchase to pop it open. Seems like it overlays more than just mates up. I’m gonna have to dremel it if I want the inner drive out, but I don’t think it’s probably worth bothering. Odds are terrible that connecting directly to sata would help, and even if it did, I don’t really have much of a use for an internal untrustworthy 2.5" HDD. Should just add to pile of targets for future range day.

Check smart data… We humans are get bias :). Having 3 levels of backup now keep the paranora out.

can’t, drive isn’t recognized. honestly even if I could, smart data is meaningless to me, I have to rely on whatever program is reading it telling me “this is an okay/bad value” and none of them ever explain why.

Well as a man I like ration data rather than its clicking more… Ask Wendel. A HD needs a many spindals and heads moving over it reading and writing… How clicking and clunking and they still work is amazing.

Again backups is key to peice of mind.

Try USB Live booting into any Linux distro and see if it recognizes it. I did that nearly 20 years ago and was able to recover the bulk of the data on a 4TB external WD HDD with only a few photos being corrupted. You should be able to copy the data to a different drive. Drag and drop.