ticking hard drive?

[xtk]

hi there.

i have a 500gb western digital external hard drive that i keep my backups and other important stuff on. when i turned it on a couple of days ago my pc wouldnt recognise it and theres a strange ticking noise coming from it.

is there anything i can do to get it to connect or get the data off it?

thanks in advance

[Illusion]

Hi Xtk, welcome to the forum.

When your hard drive starts ticking it's a sign that it's given up the ghost unfortunately. If you google the problem you'll find various remedies such as putting the hard drive in the freezer in an air tight bag etc but this is something i would only go to as a last resort.

How old is the hard drive? If it is still in warranty then you will probably be able to get it replaced by them. As far as getting your data back goes that is a grey area i'm afraid, there are lots of companies offering data recovery services but it's not cheap so it depends how much this data is worth to you. If you still have the data on your PC it may be best to just replace the hard drive and start backing up again as usual.

If you decide to go to a data recovery company be careful which one you choose, Western Digital have a list of companies on their support site (http://support.wdc.com/) which will allow the hard drive to stay in warranty after the recovery process however i don't think WD will pick up the cost of recovering your data so this is still a costly option.

Hope this helps.

Illusion