Clicking Hard Drive Problem: One Remedy That Worked to Repair My Computer

A hard drive that refuses to boot will sometimes make a clicking sound.

Tutorials, articles, and tech forums all recommend shutting a computer down right away if its hard drives click, and not to even think about opening a hard drive's case.

But what if something you really want is on it, like the stereo version of "Leader Of The Pack?"

Step one is to peel the strip of silver foil that runs around the drive's edge, This strip prevents moisture and dirt from getting inside through the seam between the drive case's top and bottom.

Newer hard drives are held together with six-sided screws. Use the right tool for the right job. A Philips-head screwdriver is not the right tool and will round the screws. A small star-bit wrench or hex wrench, or a pair of sharp-nosed pliers, will loosen them.

Hard drives have one, two, or three platters, depending on capacity, and an actuator arm. At the end of the arm are the heads that write data to the disk surfaces, one pair per platter.

The actuator arm is supposed to float over the disk, and move only when a command is given to find a file or write data.

The clicking sound is the arm moving as far as it will go to the right and back to its landing point on the disk, either in a pattern or intermittently.

If a write head touches and scratches the platter as it spins, it will erase data that's already there and make those sections of the platter unwriteable.

My drive has one platter. The top half wasn't scratched but, as I turned it by hand, I could hear a faint scraping under it.

With nothing to lose, since it wouldn't boot anyway, I tore off the flap of a handy envelope and passed it between the bottom write head and the disk surface, and turned the disk to make sure the scraping was gone.

Since my IDE cable (the gray cable that links drives to a computer's motherboard) was short where I needed long, I placed a cassette on my computer table, set a video tape on top of it, and rested the drive there so it could run in a level position as a slave.

It booted and worked fine the rest of the afternoon, with the top of its case removed, propped as it was. The envelope trick apparently worked.

It's best to transfer files from a balky hard drive right away, while it's still co-operating. It might work for years, or quit on the next boot attempt.

Hard drive surgeons should also be careful not to touch or scratch platter surfaces. Compact discs with scuffs or fingerprints will still play, but drive platters can be extremely sensitive.

The drive still works three days later, with the cover back on, hi. And "Leader Of The Pack" sounds great as it should be heard, in true stereo. (He opened the case and fixed it, you get the picture? Yes, we see . . . )