Hello,

One of my old disks, a ST320082, is making clicky noises (almost 1 click per second). It is formatted into NTFS and while I am trying to mount it, onto Windows or Linux, it starts clicking. As it is unmounted no sound is being created.

I tried to copy a part using dd (dd count=1024 if=/dev/sda of=/home/hd200/1-4294967296.bin bs=4194304 skip=0) but it stopped after copying 3.183.476.736 bytes. I tried to copy again using dd but skipping the first 4gbytes (dd count=1024 if=/dev/sda of=/home/hd200/4294967297-8589934592.bin bs=4194304 skip=4294967296), but I was unlucky, since clicky noises came up and the disk got rejected from system.

Is there any possibility to skip some parts of disk, and recover the rest?
Do you know how to disable auto-mount in windows in order to recovery applications?

Hi,

If i am right, your drive have one failing head.
To recover the others, special sw-hw complex is needed.
There is nothing what you can do safely.
You can only make things more worse at this point.
If your data important, stop this drive as soon as you can, and seek for professional help.

Regards,
Janos

any answer less generic than that?
any application suggestion?
any way to attach onto windows xp sp2 without mounting it?

Disable the failing head and image by head map.

_________________
Zero Alpha: zeroalpha.com.au
Find Cheap Donor Drives App: https://www.zeroalpha.com.au/donor-drive-app Updated February 2026

Unless you have special tools to do this one with I fear not. Look in your area you can take it there for someone to look at it for you. He has a way to tell you what is wrong with this drive. If you continue you can cause more damage to this drive and loose your data on it. Sorry but heads are nothing to fool around with and especially if they are clicking and making noise. You can damage the surface of your drive if you go on like this.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

using this first 3,2gb of data is it possible to extract the Table Of Contents at last? I was using only one ntfs partition

If you have this little image on another disk, you can use any scanner programs to analise it.
Like Getdataback or R studio, winhex.

Janos

If R-Studio, Winhex, Getdataback doesn't work for you, you might want to contact BlackSt here on the Forum. He is a Pro in your area!!! He knows his stuff