Clicking hard drive

[Brensson]

I have an internal hard drive in a dock, however it constantly clicks and when I transfer a film onto it, it shows it as being there, but will not play it back
Does anyone know a solution, bar replacing it please?

 

[Rusting In Peace]

A hard drive clicking isn't inherently bad.

Is the film playable from it's original source i.e. not on the docked hard drive? In which way does it not play the film back, does an error occur, is the video stuttering?

Have you checked the SMART data for the drive? Or perhaps run some analysis tool from the hard drives manufacturer? This is will give you a strong idea if the drive is bust or on it's way out.

 

[skaz]

There are different types of "clicky" sounds a hard drive can make. The click of death is usually the drive parking its head hitting the internal head stop. This can because of power management, or that its about to die possibly. Once my external hard drive had the click of death and I couldn't access it all.

Before I gave up on it and bought a new one I thought I would try a few things. I smacked it around, stuck it in the freezer, and swapped usb cables. And after that it worked (knock on wood).

First make sure you back up anything important from the hard drive while its still accessible. And I don't actually recommend hitting your hard drive unless your about to give up on it like I was =).

 

[duxducis]

If clicking is due to bad sectors you can fix that* programs that erase hdd like zerofill, low lewer format can do trick
there are couple programs that can attempt to repair HDD like HDD Regenerator (google it)
I zero-filled, full format, and then check with windows error check tool (with 2 options checked) that fixed my usb drive

here is free tool, if you can complete one pass it might fix
http://hddguru.com/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

 

[Brensson]

The clicking is intermittent, but like a juddering wheel would make (if that makes sense, it did in my head but not so on screen) and in terms of the playback of video, it works fine on my pc, but when I send it to the drive I get an info box stating format not recognised (I have all the appropiate codecs)
Thank You for all the answers so far and will trying your ideas, I'll let you know if they make a difference