I have a Maxtor 160gb external drive which I've had for maybe 3 years or so... well something seems to be the matter with it.
Over the past few days it seems to have gone into a cycle sometimes of making a loud clicking sound, several times in a row.
Previously it often made this sound once when starting up, and maybe once in a blue moon during operation. But it started happening like maybe 10 or 20 times in a row, maybe 5 or 10 seconds apart.
And just tonight it totally went berserk, twice in the space of a couple of minutes, it started doing the clicking noise repeatedly, mechanically and with no break... one or two clicks per second, and for maybe 20 seconds at a time.
Strangely it does not seem to have lost any data, even though it sounds like something is badly wrong inside it.
I've switched it off now in case it does die a death and takes the data with it. I've got about 70gb of stuff on there and I don't want to lose it all.
Any idea what could be wrong with it?
Over the past few days it seems to have gone into a cycle sometimes of making a loud clicking sound, several times in a row.
Previously it often made this sound once when starting up, and maybe once in a blue moon during operation. But it started happening like maybe 10 or 20 times in a row, maybe 5 or 10 seconds apart.
And just tonight it totally went berserk, twice in the space of a couple of minutes, it started doing the clicking noise repeatedly, mechanically and with no break... one or two clicks per second, and for maybe 20 seconds at a time.
Strangely it does not seem to have lost any data, even though it sounds like something is badly wrong inside it.
I've switched it off now in case it does die a death and takes the data with it. I've got about 70gb of stuff on there and I don't want to lose it all.
Any idea what could be wrong with it?
