What Is Hard Drive Click of Death? What to Do to Save Data

What Is Click of Death in an HDD

Click of death, click death, or COD refers to the first symptom of a failed hard drive. In the late 1990s, this term had become common. Click of death refers to the clicking sound in disk storage systems like traditional hard drives (HDDs), which indicates that the hard disk has failed – usually, it is catastrophic.

The “click of death” word was first created by Mac journalist Tim Robertson and originally described a failure mode of the Iomega ZIP drives. The Iomega ZIP drives were prone to developing misaligned heads. But hard drives are also liable to the symptom.

On a hard disk, click of death refers to a similar failure mode. When the disk tries to recover from one or more errors again and again, the head actuator may knock or click. And you can hear these sounds when the heads unload or load, or the actuator strikes a stop, or both.

To sum up, the clicking sound of hard drives is commonly the result of a mechanical failure, more specifically a head crash. When booting your PC or using it, the disk head must move correctly and confirm that it is correctly tracking disk data. If the disk head cannot move as expected or cannot move to track the disk surface correctly, the disk controller will try to return the head to its home position and then retry to recover from the error.

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What Causes Click of Death Hard Drive

After knowing what hard drive click of death is, some of you may be concerned about why this situation appears. Usually, the common reasons include:

• The disk head fails: It cannot relay its position, leading to the drive moving the arm back and forth across the disc. Then, the arm hits the stops (metal pieces to prevent it from moving too far). Then, a ticking noise can be heard.
• Power is not enough: The arm magnets may fail due to a power issue and cause the clicking sound.
• General wear and tear: Hard drives won’t last forever. If you have used the HDD for years and it recently started clicking, the arm may wear out and malfunction.
• Manufacturing defects: Hard drives may go wrong due to manufacturing errors. If you use a relatively new hard disk, this could be the problem.
• Overheating (Related post: What If You Meet Hard Drive Overheat? Fix It & Backup Data!)
• Physical shocks
• Power surges
• Damaged Disc Platter
• More…

The factors that lead to hard drive clicking are various and it is not easy to find out which is the culprit behind the issue. But you can check if your hard drive is failing via some signs. Let’s continue reading to find the information you need.

How to Determine If HDD Is Click of Death

In general, you can tell if your hard drive cannot work properly via multiple ways. The most obvious is the clicking sound. Besides, you should notice some other symptoms, as shown below

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1. Missing files or files fail to open
2. Frequent computer freezes and crashes
3. A rising number of bad sectors
4. Consuming excessive time to access files and folders
5. S.M.A.R.T Status is not OK
6. A black or blue screen appears frequently
7. Cannot detect your hard drive in BIOS

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If you hear the clicking sound or run into some similar situations, your hard drive will be damaged/fail sooner or later. Before it is thoroughly failed, the urgent thing you should do is save your data from loss. Next, we will show you how to protect data via MiniTool software.

How to Back up Disk Data Before Hard Drive Fails Completely

On your hard drive, you may store a multitude of fairly important files. Before the hard drive is useless completely in case of click of death, take measures to save the crucial disk data. If you can still access your hard drive, you can run the professional backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker to backup files.

This program supports backing up files, folders, disks, and partitions. With it, you can configure a time point to automatically back up data every day, week, or month. If you have a lot of data to back up at intervals, you can use MiniTool ShadowMaker to create incremental or differential backups.

In addition to backup, this backup tool enables you to sync files & folders and clone a hard drive to another disk for disk upgrade or disk backup.  

Now, download and install MiniTool ShadowMaker on your Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 PC, then start backing up disk data.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

How to back up files in case of click of death:

Step 1: Connect a USB flash drive or external hard drive to your PC.

Step 2: Run this backup software and click Keep Trial after loading.

Step 3: Click the Backup tab on the left side and then you can see system partitions are selected in SOURCE. To back up files, click this section, tap on Folders and Files, open a drive, check all the items you want to back up, and click OK to confirm the selection.

Step 4: Go back to Backup and click DESTINATION, choose your USB drive or external drive as the target to save the backup image.

Step 5: Start the data backup by clicking Back Up Now.

If you want to reserve all the disk data including files you have saved, Windows settings, system files, apps, registry keys, etc., you can choose to clone the hard disk. MiniTool ShadowMaker supports cloning HDD to SSD and moving Windows to another drive, as mentioned above. Get it and use its Clone Disk feature for the cloning task to save disk data in the event of click of death. Before proceeding, make sure you can access the disk.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

How to clone a bad hard drive to another HDD or a new SSD:

Step 1: Launch MiniTool ShadowMaker Trial Edition.

Step 2: In the Tools tab, click Clone Disk.

Step 3: Choose the source disk and target disk.

Step 4: Then, start the cloning process. If you need to clone a system disk, register the software with a license and then finish the last step.

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How to Recover Data from a Dead Hard Drive

Besides using MiniTool ShadowMaker to back up disk data or clone the hard drive, you can run professional and excellent data recovery software to recover data from your failing hard drive when click of death happens. Here, we recommend seeking help from MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

This program makes it easy to recover lost/deleted files from a formatted/RAW/deleted/lost/dead drive in Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7.  To get data back from your damaged HDD, download its Free Edition to scan for the disk to see if it can find the files you need and then recover them.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Step 2: Go to the Devices tab, put the mouse on the disk you want to scan, and click Scan.

Step 3: After finishing the scan, find the files that you need, check them, and tap on Save.

How to Fix Click of Death

After saving data from your Seagate, WD, Toshiba, Samsung, or another brand of disk using MiniTool software, you may consider fixing hard drive click of death.

Generally speaking, once the hard disk encounters click of death, it is unlikely to be repaired. If you have a backup, you can directly recover data. If not, follow the given instructions above to get data back using MiniTool ShadowMaker or MiniTool Power Data Recovery when the disk is still accessible.

But in terms of the physical damage, you can find a homemade remedy online to temporarily fix the damage. It is Freezer Trick that has been used since the early days of computing.

The trick refers to putting the hard drive into a waterproof plastic bag and then placing it in a freezer. After a few hours, the metal can cool down and then constrict. In some cases, this operation can free up the disk to spin.

This is a very outdated technology. Once it warms up, corrosion of the drive and electrical components will appear. The Freezer Trick is a last chance to quickly back up any data to another drive

How to Dispose of Your Hard Drive After It Encounters COD

If you suffer from click of death and have taken action to save your data, how can you dispose of your failing hard drive? You can choose to wipe all the disk data or directly physically damage it to prevent anyone from stealing your data.

Speaking of wiping a disk, you can run another MiniTool software – MiniTool Partition Wizard to do this task. It offers a feature called Wipe Disk that helps completely erase everything on the disk and hardly any software can recover wiped data. Get this free partition manager via the button below and install it on your PC.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to enter its main interface.

Step 2: Right-click on the disk that meets click of death and choose Wipe Disk.

Step 3: Select a wiping method and tap on OK.

Step 4: Finally, click Apply to start the wiping process.

Wrapping up

Hard drive click of death can happen due to some reasons. If you are unlucky and suffer from this annoying issue, remember to back up your important files or recover files from the disk using MiniTool ShadowMaker or MiniTool Power Data Recovery. Saving data from loss is of primary importance. Besides, you can take action to dispose of the failing hard drive.

If you have any idea about click of death on your Seagate, WD, Samsung, or other disk, contact us via sending an email to our support team.

FAQs on Click of Death Hard Drive