> Clunking / other strange hard drive noises

Summary
Strange noises are a sure sign of physical damage to your hard drive. Stop using the drive immediately. Do NOT attempt recovery yourself, you will almost always only cause more damage! Call us or click START MY RECOVERY.

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Problem Description
You know how your hard drive has always sounded in the past, and now it’s making a very different noise--a clicking hard drive. Sometimes, the reason is obvious; such as impact damage or problems following a disaster, but these noises are unfortunately a relatively common problem that can occur simply due to wear on the fast moving parts of your drive.

Usually, you will notice immediate trouble in accessing files. Sometimes, however, you may not be experiencing any software or data problems while you hear the clicking or clunking hard drive noises, but every second the hard drive is allowed to operate, the threat of severe data loss increases.

The Bad News
This problem is always an indication of failing or failed hard drive components, usually the read/write head mechanism. When the read/write heads begin to fail, a very common result is platter scoring, something that must be avoided at all cost. Platter scoring is the worst damage that can be done to your hard drive, as it is the physical destruction of your data. Hard drive platters can spin at 5200-15000 rpm depending on the model, and the heads normally rest just 2 millionths of an inch above the platter, but never should touch. If the head mechanism is failing and physically touching the platter while the hard drive is spinning at such speeds, you can understand the potential severity of the problem as the heads literally scratch and rake your data right off the platter. The tiny particles of magnetic material and/or alloy protective coat that are scratched off the platter’s surface by the heads can then cause additional damage as they fly around and scratch the platter themselves.

The Good News
In almost all of these cases, IT Data Recovery can still recover most or all of your data.
The faster you shut down your computer and stop using the failing drive, the less damage you allow to occur. Any extra use severely compromises your data’s safety. The earlier you catch this problem, the greater your chances are for a full recovery.
Sometimes the problem has progressed to the point where there is already severe platter scoring. Unfortunately, severe platter scoring can happen in seconds, but using our methods we can almost always recover the data that has not been physically turned to dust from the damaged platter. Usually, platter scoring will have destroyed only a small portion of your data while the remaining data is still intact and accessible using our methods and equipment. Attempting to recover data yourself when there is physical damage to your hard drive will only increase the damage to the drive. This is a job that only a professional can accomplish successfully.

The Solution
The key to safely recovering and preserving your data in these cases is to immediately shut down your computer to prevent any further damage, and call us or click START MY RECOVERY. After shut down, we ask that you send the drive to us for our free evaluation and estimate, and for our professional and affordable services.

IT Data Recovery is one of the top data recovery companies, specializing in RAID Data Recovery Services and Hard Disk Data Recovery Services.