Hard Drive Data Recovery Clicking Disk

By far the most common problem we hear about are clicking hard drives. Most data recovery companies automatically assume that a clicking hard drive means physical hard drive data recovery. While in most cases the clicking sound is indicative of a head crash and will require clean room work, there are other problems that can cause “the click of death” Below are 3 different types of clicking disks that we performed hard drive data recovery on:
Clicking Hard Drive

Why Hard Drives Click

The most common reason a hard drive will start clicking is because of a head failure. The heads can no longer find the first sector on the disk and go into a seek pattern. Things like heat can actually warp the platter and make the drive inaccessible. When looking at high capacity hard drives that are over 500GB, this problem is intensified because the sectors are placed perpendicularly on the platter, making it even harder to read. While this is great for mass storage, it doesn’t take much to cause a problem.

Below is a close up of hard drive heads:

Hard Drive Heads Up Close

When Clicking Disks Do Not Need Physical Hard Drive Data Recovery

Newer high capacity hard drives use a language called micro-code to communicate internally. Any chip on the PCB board that houses firmware uses micro-code to get it’s instruction set. As you can imagine, if there is a breakdown in firmware  the drive can go haywire.

This type of hard drive data recovery is not a physical recovery and is often less expensive. The first thing DTI Data does when it triage’s a clicking hard drive, is to determine if it is a logical problem or a physical problem. That way we can give our customers the best pricing! DTI only charges if it recovers the data. Call Toll Free: 1-866-438-6932 to ask about hard drive data recovery.