I have an external Firewire HD, 300Gb AcomData brand (Apple system profile calls it Hitachi HDT72503). I power everything down every night. In the morning when this HD first starts up it goes "click click click". :cry: It continues to click the first few times I access files on it. Then it doesn't click anymore for the rest of the day. This has been happening every morning for the past couple of weeks.

How bad is this? Is there anything to be done or should I just continue using it until it dies?

(I backup the HD's contents daily)

Quote from: gnubler on July 22, 2010, 10:09:51 AMI have an external Firewire HD, 300Gb AcomData brand (Apple system profile calls it Hitachi HDT72503). I power everything down every night. In the morning when this HD first starts up it goes "click click click". :cry: It continues to click the first few times I access files on it. Then it doesn't click anymore for the rest of the day. This has been happening every morning for the past couple of weeks.

How bad is this? Is there anything to be done or should I just continue using it until it dies?

(I backup the HD's contents daily)

Did you run the disc utility on it?

Quote from: gnubler on July 22, 2010, 10:09:51 AMI have an external Firewire HD, 300Gb AcomData brand (Apple system profile calls it Hitachi HDT72503). I power everything down every night. In the morning when this HD first starts up it goes "click click click". :cry: It continues to click the first few times I access files on it. Then it doesn't click anymore for the rest of the day. This has been happening every morning for the past couple of weeks.

How bad is this? Is there anything to be done or should I just continue using it until it dies?

(I backup the HD's contents daily)

That drive is mere days, if not hours from imminent failure. Dump it NOW, I hope it's not to late.

Oh no.

I'll do another backup and run DU on it, let you know what it says.

It's a hardware problem. The clicking is the first sure sign that you are going to lose it. Has happened to me several times. It is DOOMED!

Right on! That's my kinda hard drive!

Ran Disk Utility. It said it was OK. Then I clicked on "Repair Disk" anyway and got this error.

Trust me, it's toast.

"it's just a series of clicks"...


how old is the drive? more than three years?

No idea.

It holds all job files, so I'm accessing it constantly every day and I work from it (not locally). Hence my daily backup.

I'll put a request in for a new HD on Monday. I'd hate to be in the middle of a job and then suddenly everything just goes *POOF*.

here's a web site about drive failures and that has sounds in it for your "Hitachi".

QuoteAnother quite common symptom Hitachi drives experience is clicking or knocking sound. The drive spins up and the head starts clicking from the start: , . Most often this a sign of bad heads  and the drive needs head assembly swapped from a matching donor.

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/hitachi

Quotewidely known in data recovery business for their line of DeskStar HDDs also known as DeathStars.

Nice!

You should probably just get a bowl of ice cream and watch it all go down.   

I have a prediction. :shocked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfjTZLxekig#t=00m40s

Are you sure it doesn't sound more like 'ding?' And did you check the deep fryer?