the hard drive stoped working today and this is the noise it's making.
it's realy low so i amplified it
the backround sound is the fan. the only noise the hard drive does is the clicking and then it stops clicking and spins ok.

This is a 2.5" WD drive, am i right?

The head can't get the servo information from the disk.
Stop using it if you want your data back, and seek for professional help.

Janos

That drive cannot find servo.

Causes in the order of their probability:
1. Bad Head
2. Bad preamp
3. Bad PCB
4. No servo on the platter

First u need proper diagnosis to chose one(or more) of the above.

pepe

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

what does

4. No servo on the platter

means?

The heads positioning needs the servo information on the platter wich is position marks (and more).
If the head is KO, the controll circuit don't know where it is, and moves forward and backward without controll.
This is bad and dangerous, because the heads can bounced back from the end points, and can be damaged, and can scratch up the suface as well....

Janos

thank you, i understand what you said about the servo and what it does,
but what i asked about "4 No servo on the platter"

how could it be gone from the platter, what causes the servo to dissapear from the platters.

I think he means it could not be located due to the other 3 listed or that they may be corrupted. Usually to erase servo information you need to magnetize a platter. which will eradicate everything from it.

simple: Demagnetisation.

This can be artifically, or suddenly like power spike damages the preamp or write channel when the drive is working, or someone try to run a drive with replaced pcb and the original preamp is damaged too.

Janos

is losing the servo on the platter makes it impossible to recover the data?

depends on how bad the servo damage is. Complete wipe of the servo information would make the drive unrecoverable.

agree.
No servo = no data.
Partially servo: only some company can handle this, and only some data can be recovered, maybe .doc and .xls files but no bigger files have chance in this case.

Fortunaltey, the servo damage is really rare.
I have seen the most often when some beginner try to replace the MHA with similar but not equal P/N parts, and the different head geometry makes write displacements, and damage the servo areas....

(The drive _DO_ writes in the SA without any user interaction.)

Janos

doesn't a severe head crash with severe scratching of the platters literary erases the servo and causing the drive to click with no servo?
or head crash noise will be different from what i posted?

Head crash noise different, because you can hear the scratching some times enough loud.
But the issue is the same.
The crashed head can't get the servo information, wich is equal when the servo absent.

Janos

in order to make a noise like my hard drive if the reason is that servo is gone from the platter. should a head crash be severe?
or any small head crash can take the servo information off the platter?
if you had to guess, is it a head crash or the other reasons(pcb,heads,preamp)? based on the noise.
just make an aducated guess, i know you cant know for sure.