This drive is clicking, usually in a series of three. Occasionally (especially when cold), I can coax it into mounting properly and retrieving data but it has now deterioriated greatly. The clicking sounds like some type of attempt to re-sync / park heads. No scraping or other mechanical failure is evident. I'm on my last practical guess here and am going to try a board swap. Someone shoot me a message if they have one matching that listed in the subject.

A board swap won't work. That said, remove the board and gently clean any oxidisation from the 20 preamp contact pads with a soft white pencil eraser.

Otherwise, clone your drive ASAP sector-by-sector using a utility that understands how to work around bad sectors.

See delays-found-hard-disk-t18034.html

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A backup a day keeps DR away.