# WD Hard Drive click of death.



## Genestealer (Jan 26, 2009)

I have three Western Digital hard drives in my computer. When I turned on my computer today, one of hard drives began clicking, it was clicking pretty loud then computer froze after BIOS screen with some error messages. After booting it again, it began clicking again for about 15 seconds, then computer finally booted, I checked the S.M.A.R.T. of all three drives with different s.m.a.r.t tools and every tool shows health check "PASSED", and I can access all of 3 hard drives. 
Now, how do I need to check which one is failing? so I could backup the right hard drive as soon as possible?


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## konsole (Jan 27, 2009)

maybe the chkdsk utility?


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## Genestealer (Jan 27, 2009)

konsole said:


> maybe the chkdsk utility?



No way, I read if I run CHKDSK on failing drive then I kill my chances of data recovery.... .


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## lawson_jl (Jan 27, 2009)

I'd pull off all the data I could off the drive.  As for which drive it is i'd say its likely the boot drive if it's holding up the boot process.  It is possiable it's one of the other drives but that's not likely to slow or stop the boot up.  If a drive is clicking it's going to die, it's not a matter of if it's just a matter of when.  Once you ahve cloned the drive it's a great time to use spinrite.  Spinrite will either kill the drive or restore the drive.  I still wouldn't rely on it for anything important.


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## EGS (Jan 27, 2009)

Your solution: An External HDD:
http://www.computerforum.com/142422-external-hd.html#post1171116


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## Genestealer (Jan 27, 2009)

EGS said:


> Your solution: An External HDD:
> http://www.computerforum.com/142422-external-hd.html#post1171116



I think I will buy internal one and replace whichever one is failing.
I got 2 external HDD's, they take up too much space on the desk.
One reason that I doubt it is boot hard drive because computer freezes (harddrive clicking) during BIOS initialization, before Intel Matrix Storage Controller/manager loads. But I really don't know, maybe that's right, boot drive's failing.
I just don't understand why SMART shows that everything's alright.
Two hard drives are 250GB they're about 2.8 years old and almost always on, maybe one of them, but that's hard to predict, because I read even new drives often fail within a week or so. The other internal I got is about 8 months old.


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## dznutz (Jan 27, 2009)

the hard drive article published by google said that SMART was not a good indicator of drive failures.


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## PunterCam (Jan 27, 2009)

Just copy off the important stuff. Buy and fill a 500gb drive, stick it on a shelf, and continue using the computer as you were. I've yet to fail to recover the data on a failed hard drive, and I've worn out dosens.


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## 3uL (Jan 27, 2009)

Maybe your HD is lack of power supply. Mine like that. I thought my hd is going to dead. After many times checking it was power supply.


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## EGS (Jan 27, 2009)

You have two external HDD? You only need one...
You can take out one you know and just put it in your PC. Most external HDD are 7200rpm SATA drives..


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