Hardware Tips: Don't Get Caught With Your Disk Down

Clicks and Grinds

Keep your ears tuned for any unusual noises coming from your hard disk: Strange sounds often mean big trouble; for examples, download .wav files of some common hard-drive-in-distress sounds. (Thanks to John Christopher of data recovery service DriveSavers.com for providing these files.)

A high-pitched whining sound (bearings.wav) could mean your hard drive's bearings are going bad. Relatively speaking, this is good news; you may actually be able to rescue your soon-to-be-stranded data. If your operating system loads and you're able to move files off the hard disk, do so immediately.

If you hear sustained clicking noises, you probably won't be able to access the hard disk at all, and your operating system most likely won't load. A pause-click, pause-click sound (cycleclick.wav) indicates that your drive's read/write heads are trying to orient themselves. The drive has probably sustained some damage, and you've likely lost some data. Continuous, rapid-fire clicking (excess.wav) is an ominous sound for any drive.

In either case, your chances of recovering your data manually are slim. Don't keep turning your system on and off in hopes that your hard drive will finally catch, or start up, one last time; it won't.

Any grinding or scraping sound (grind.wav) is another sign of serious trouble. Your hard drive's read/write heads are in contact with the disk's media surface--where the data is stored. Shut down your drive immediately; the longer it runs, the more data you may lose.

Your best chance of recovering data from the catastrophic failure indicated by these clicking and grinding sounds is to send your drive to a data recovery service. Both DriveSavers.com and Ontrack are very skilled at rescuing data from dead drives. But be prepared to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on your PC's operating system, the size of the hard drive, and how quickly you need to recover your data.