Hi

While back I got an TOSHIBA DT01ACA050 hdd which was left outside for who knows how long. After confirming there weren't any issues on the PCB I powered it on. Was greeted with head clicking, spinning down and immediately spinning up, then it repeated that 3 times and shut down.

Then I came back to it a day later and it magically fixed itself? It was booting into windows which was left on it. SMART showed nothing wrong. After formatting it and putting a new w7, it complained mid-install that a file couldn't be found. Going back to drive selection I noticed that the toshiba wasn't showing up. Rebooting the system made the drive start clicking again.

I suspect SA damage, but I have no idea if there are terminal pins on these drives, so I ask here for guidance on how to troubleshoot.

Maybe the weather got to it. You could check the electronics for any corrosion

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There's nothing wrong on the PCB. No corrosion/defects. Forgot to mention the drive sometimes clicked its heads during normal operation like it was starting to do the same thing as before.

It looks like the drive starts clicking the moment it passes an certain temperature. I guess this could either mean bad PCB/platter damage/weak heads that only work when they are cold.