A WD Element drive, a WD5000BMVW, "making a clicking noise upon startup" and "not detected by my pc or laptop". It then "powers down after a minute or so of trying to start up". That last detail is the useful one: a drive that shuts itself down has run out of attempts to ready its heads, which is a mechanical fault stated in the drive's own language. It is not a power problem and it is not a cable, whatever the symptom looks like from the outside. The heads cannot read, the drive cannot complete its start-up routine, and after roughly a minute of trying it does the sensible thing and stops — which is more restraint than most people manage with it.
| Media | A WD Elements portable drive, model WD5000BMVW, clicking on start-up and shutting down about a minute later. |
| Reported situation | WD Elements portable (WD5000BMVW) · clicks on start-up · not detected by PC or by laptop · powers down after roughly a minute of trying to start. |
| Fault class | Head fault — the click is the head assembly failing to read on start-up, and because start-up never completes the drive powers itself down and is never presented to either machine. Data intact on the platters; repeated start-up attempts are the hazard. |
| Equipment used | Not started again once the pattern was described · removed from the enclosure and brought up on a current-limited bench supply, the click-and-shutdown sequence characterised · opened under a laminar-flow hood, examined under a stereo microscope, a matched donor head set fitted and aligned · copied to an image on DeepSpar, PC-3000 UDMA underneath, the data found in R-Studio and checked. |
A hard drive has a start-up routine, and it is stricter than most people imagine. It spins up, loads the heads over the surface, finds its calibration data and reads its own internal tables. Only when all of that has succeeded does it announce itself to the computer. Interrupt any step and nothing is presented — not a drive letter, not an unallocated disk, nothing at all. Which is why 'not detected' and 'has a serious mechanical fault' are frequently the same sentence.
The click tells you which step failed. Heads that cannot read cannot find the calibration data, so they retract, reload and try again, and that reload is the noise. After a minute or so of getting nowhere, the drive stops. That shutdown is not a fault on top of the fault; it is the firmware behaving properly, and in a small way it is on your side, because a drive that stops trying is a drive doing less damage to itself.
The correct response is to let it stay stopped. Every further attempt puts damaged heads back onto the surface, and that is where recorded data actually gets lost. The drive is opened in clean air instead, the head assembly is replaced with a matched donor set, and the reading is done once, properly, in controlled passes on equipment built for it. Everything after that happens on the image, never on the drive.
It was not asked to start again. It came out of the enclosure and went onto a current-limited bench supply, where the click-and-shutdown sequence was characterised without letting the drive run on. It was opened beneath laminar flow, examined under a stereo microscope, given matched donor heads and set for alignment, then imaged using DeepSpar over a PC-3000 UDMA in controlled passes so the weak areas were approached gently rather than hammered. The data was picked out in R-Studio and verified before it went onto fresh media.
Head assembly replaced in filtered air, the drive read out to an image, and the data returned on fresh media. The diagnostic cost nothing and produced one fixed written figure including VAT. Opening a drive means committing donor parts and hours in filtered air, so half that figure fell due before the work started and the rest only once the recovery was proven. The platters were unmarked, which is what usually happens when a drive is left alone after the first bad start-up rather than restarted twenty more times.
Let it stay given up. The pattern — clicks, tries, shuts down after about a minute — is a drive telling you it cannot ready its heads, and every fresh attempt to make it work puts those heads back over the surface where your data is recorded. It will not be fixed by another cable, another port or another computer, because the drive is failing before it ever gets as far as talking to a computer. Take it out of the enclosure if that is easy, leave it in its case if it is not, and get it to somebody with clean air, matched donor parts and imaging equipment. A drive stopped after two bad start-ups usually comes back in full; the same drive after two hundred often does not.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Norwich and Norfolk, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each sets out the reasoning behind the diagnosis and the method used on that particular fault, with the equipment named.
The noise is the diagnosis — heads that can no longer read, and every retry costs you surface
He had already worked it out — a clicking drive has no way of announcing itself, so Windows is shown nothing whatever
Short falls count — heads fly nanometres above the surface, and the click says this one was enough
Diagnosis costs nothing and takes up to 2 working days from arrival, the quote is fixed in writing, and logical work runs no fix, no fee — start online or ring the freephone.