Richard Peat-Hanna San Diego Master Computer Repair Technician says, “Clicking sounds, when your computer is searching for data, are a really big red alert because when a hard drive starts emitting those sounds it is in imminent danger of crash. When you hear them you need to make sure that you have everything backed up and then shut the computer down because those clicking sounds are the sound of data being lost. The longer you run it after hearing those clicks, the more data you lose.”
There are strange sounds that come from your computer from time to time. Some of them are like whirring sounds or grinding sounds, some sound like a fan. Frequently that’s what it is. And that is something you need to take care of, but they are not a red alert, those clicking sounds are.
The most common type of hard drives, which use platters and a head that slides over the platters that reads the data from the material on the platters. Usually, a clicking sound means that the head itself is either hitting the platter, which gouges chunks out and destroys data, or it’s not engaging with the platter correctly and the head’s not locating itself correctly on the platter. That is actually what is mechanically happening when you hear those kinds of clicking sounds coming from your computer. The clicks are an indication of the possibility of serious data loss.
Your first concern should be to get the maximum amount of data backed up then to shut the computer down and take it to a place that’s proficient in pulling the data off without further damaging the hard drive.
Windows 7, Windows 8, no doubt Windows 10, Linux and Macs can detect when hard drives are starting to fail and they detect it a long time before you get the clicking sounds. The clicking sounds are the end game. There is still readable data and still accessible data on your hard drive when Windows or any of the other operating systems start to notify you.
The really important thing here is, if you haven’t been doing regular backups, backup all of your business data right away. If you have been doing regular backups, make sure you’ve backed the most recent data and then either repair it yourself, by cloning and reinstalling your new hard drive or take it to someone that can do that for you because the drive will fail.
These operating systems are now really good at detecting when that’s going to happen and you have a little bit more time than when you have the clicking sounds. If you have clicking sounds you’ve probably ignored the earlier warnings you were getting. Windows XP was not as good at detecting hard drive failure as the more recent operating systems.
To see more about Richard Pete-Hanna visit his website at: http://www.creataisi.com/.
Or, call (760) 644-2006.