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“Click of death” is a sound produced by a defective disk drive. It’s caused by the read head failing or magnets applying the wrong amount of force. Solutions include having a backup, getting another drive, freezing the disk, or enlisting a data recovery company.
“Click of death” is a term that refers to the sound produced by a defective disk drive in a computer or storage device. The term has been relatively common since the late 1990s. The more frequent use of the phrase appears to have originated from problems encountered with removable storage systems.
As of early 2011, most electronic data was kept on spinning disk computer storage media. In the case of hard drives and removable storage devices, there is a read head that moves back and forth across the drive’s disk, also known as a platter. The head is mounted at the end of an actuator arm, which is moved by magnets on either side. The head communicates its position on the platter to the disk drive system. This allows the drive to move the arm and disk for optimal data transfer.
The most common cause of the death click in a hard drive is when the read head fails. In this case, the head is no longer able to transmit its position, resulting in the drive moving the arm back and forth across the disc. When this occurs, the arm hits stops — pieces of metal designed to keep it from traveling too far — and when it makes contact, a clicking sound is heard. This is what is referred to as the click of death.
A head injury isn’t the only source of the click of death. In rare cases, the arm magnets may fail due to a power problem. This can also cause the dreaded sound as the magnets apply the wrong amount of force to move the actuator arm, causing it to slam into the stops.
In the case of some removable drives, the click of death is almost always caused by the drive incorrectly writing data to a removable cartridge. Just like a hard drive, the read heads are unable to find data on the disk. Heads are repeatedly inserted and removed from the disk cartridge as the drive searches for data. This is also a clicking noise and hence it is called the click of death.
Whether there is a solution to the click of death is almost as common a question as the phrase itself. The best solution is for the user to always have a backup of their data, negating the need to attempt any sort of repair. If no backup is available, the user has several options.
In the case of a removable drive, the user can get another drive. In almost all cases, this works because the error is caused by the drive transferring data incorrectly. The cartridge itself, however, is fine.
For a hard drive, there are a few steps you can take, such as touching the outside of the drive, which can sometimes dislodge a stuck head. Another method is to freeze the disk for four to six hours, then try to use it again while it’s still cold. This is to force the platter to move slightly if it gets stuck. Finally, the user can connect the drive to another computer and attempt to read the data that way. More often than not, these fixes don’t result in alleviating the click of death, because they’re only able to succeed in the event of a physical fault with the drive.
If these methods are unsuccessful, there is a possible solution. If the data is important enough, the user can enlist the help of a data recovery company, who can attempt to extract the data from the drive platter or platters. Using these services is usually a last resort because the process tends to be very expensive.
