My Seagate hard drive is clicking and won't work

So, here’s my latest blunder. I have this 500 GB SATA Seagate hard drive from my secondary rig. It’s practically brand new—has barely seen 20 days of actual use. I don't have the warranty paperwork anywhere, and today, it started making this faint, rhythmic clicking sound. To make matters worse, macOS refuses to even acknowledge its existence. The PC struggles just to boot up with it connected; the BIOS sees it, but after that? Total silence. Now, full disclosure: I acted like a complete moron. Out of sheer boredom and because I’ve never actually opened one of these things up before, I decided to unscrew the top casing just to see what the internals looked like. I didn't touch anything, I swear—I just closed it back up, screwed it tight, and now it’s effectively a paperweight. I’m assuming my curiosity is exactly what killed it. Is there any hope left here? I was wondering if it might be worth trying to swap the PCB from another drive to see if that does anything, though I doubt it. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thomas Wells5 said:So, I've got this 500 GB SATA Seagate hard drive from my spare PC, and it's basically brand new since it's only had about 20 days of actual use, though I don't have the warranty anymore. It started making this really faint clicking sound today, and now macOS won't even recognize it; the computer barely boots up with it attached, and while the BIOS sees it, that's about as far as it goes. Just to be honest, I'm a total dummy and decided to pop the top cover off because I was bored and wanted to see what the inside looked like—I've never opened a drive before. I didn't touch anything, I just closed it back up and screwed it tight, and now it's dead, so I'm probably just being an idiot and messed it up myself... I'm wondering if there's any hope left here, maybe if I try swapping the electronics from another drive to see if that helps? Any advice would be great.

Honestly, you might just want to toss it in the trash since you opened it up; the inside of a drive is hermetically sealed, and they make sure it's completely free of dust and debris during manufacturing using special air filters that allow for air circulation without letting any particles in. Now, when you powered it up full of dust (and I know you'll probably tell me that nothing fell in because you closed it so fast, but let's be real, unless you're living in a cleanroom with industrial filters, every room has plenty of dust), the head likely started scratching the surface of the platters, which means the drive is pretty much toast even if the BIOS still picks it up. The circuit board might be fine, but the most important part—those magnetic platters—are ruined, so the whole unit is effectively dead.

Lesson learned for next time: maybe do a quick Google search before tinkering with things so you can figure out how they work and what's safe to touch -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_d...ty_and_failure

As soon as those clicking sounds started, I'm thinking it was probably already a lost cause. Honestly, there’s no point in trying to DIY this at this stage. If you think there’s actually important data on there, your best bet is to just hand it over to some specialists at a professional data recovery lab. If there isn't anything vital on it, though, you might as well just toss it or maybe crack it open if you want some cool scrap metal for a desk ornament.

It doesn't necessarily mean you'll hear clicking right away, because there can be several different causes at play here; usually, it's just an indicator that things are starting to fail, but it might take some time before the drive actually gives up the ghost entirely. However, the fact that he mentioned opening up the drive is the real kicker in this specific situation. 😁

As for getting that data back, I have to be honest—it’s going to be an uphill battle without using some pretty pricey, specialized recovery techniques. When you're dealing with dust contamination, you can't just spin those platters up and hope for the best to read the files; you'd need to meticulously decontaminate the platters and probably deep-clean the entire chassis too. I suspect a magnetic microscope might help, but I'm really not sure if anyone even has that kind of high-end equipment available here in the States.

Of course, just because you start hearing clicking sounds doesn't necessarily mean everything is completely lost, but once you mention it’s not even showing up outside of the BIOS anymore, that's usually a pretty solid indicator that the drive has likely kicked the bucket. As far as getting your data back goes, there are several specialized firms here in the States that handle this kind of thing (like Bell Labs and similar outfits); honestly, prices have dropped quite a bit over the last few years, so it shouldn't cost you an absolute fortune 😁

I heard prices have actually dipped lately, which is a bit of a relief, but honestly, my biggest worry with doing any kind of recovery is that these labs don't exactly expect you to be opening up drives outside of a sterile cleanroom environment. They’ve got their fancy controlled setups for cracking these things open, whereas this drive is just absolutely covered in grit and dust, so I’m feeling pretty skeptical about whether we can even salvage anything if there's critical data on there—really hoping it's just junk...

Well, damn, I just went ahead and tossed that 500GB drive—the one that finally gave up the ghost—into the bin. I also ditched the 2TB one, though it was actually running perfectly fine. It’s a real shame because that larger drive was practically brand new, but honestly, what can you do?

Thomas Wells5 said:Well, I ended up tossing that 500GB drive since it's totally dead, and I did the same with my 2TB one too, even though it seems fine for now—it's a real bummer because it was pretty much brand new, but there you go.

lol, goodness me, why on earth did both of them go out? 🤦

It’s honestly a little miracle that the 2TB one hasn't started acting up yet, so if I were you, I definitely wouldn't trust it with anything important; it'll probably give up the ghost pretty soon, so maybe check those SMART parameters or run a quick scan with something like HD Tune or Hard Disk Sentinel.

Next time you're curious about how a specific piece of hardware actually functions in person, maybe just grab something off eBay for $17 and tear it apart.

Don't even bother buying one. I'll just give you a whole pack of defective ones instead. 😁

@Randy, honestly, I think even if they were completely totaled, I could probably still dig the data out—as long as nobody went and scratched the platters with a screwdriver.

Oh, how absolutely miraculous. I ran a scan with Sentinel and the health status is flawless, yet the drive remains completely silent while it's actually working.

Thomas Wells5

Grab a live Unix distro.
Boot the machine from the Live media.
Once you're inside the Unix environment, plug in that hard drive and wipe it completely.

After that, just boot back into macOS normally and check if things have improved—they should.
That's the starting point.

Jeffrey Hall66 said:honestly, don't even bother buying one—I'll just give you a bunch of my broken ones for free😁

@Randy, I honestly think even if they were totally smashed up, I could probably dig some data out as long as nobody went and scratched the platters with a screwdriver, haha.

I mean, anything is possible, really; it’s just a matter of how much of that data stays actually useful after a major disaster, which I guess just comes down to luck.

Thomas Wells5 said:It's actually kind of wild, I ran a scan with Sentinel and everything looks absolutely perfect, plus it's being super quiet while it runs.

That is pretty strange, though, so maybe don't be too shocked if bad sectors start popping up later on; basically, I wouldn't trust that drive or put anything important on it.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about that 2TB drive. I ended up handing it over to a buddy of mine on credit for some other project. He’s pretty tech-savvy himself, so I mentioned that I'd opened the casing, but everything functions perfectly fine—so my conscience is completely clear here.
@Noah Miller6/">@@Noah Miller6, does it actually matter which Unix distribution I go with? I think I have an Ubuntu ISO sitting around somewhere that I can grab.

Unix, Unix-based flavors, Mint...
pick one.

First off, it looks like you're dealing with a hardware issue here, so no amount of software tinkering is going to fix it—even formatting the drive on a Unix system won't help if the physical components are shot. That said, if you really want to try and get some life out of it, your best bet would be to boot up a lightweight live distro like Porteus from a USB stick to see if it can even recognize the drive.

The hard drive ended up in the trash, so we might just have to lock it down here