Clicking sound, not recognized HD-PCT1TU2-BK

[mbuchsbaum]

I have a Buffalo MiniStation Model# HD-PCT1TU2-BK-US. It was purchased on 12/18/12. It seemed to work flawlessly until about 3 weeks ago. The problem is a loud clicking noise that comes from the drive. I tried reconnecting it and also to a different computer. In both cases the drive just clicks and is not recognized by Windows. I tried again today and now it still clicks, but Windows gave it a drive letter and said it needed to be formatted. If I click yes to format, Windows says it can't be formatted. So I now have a useless drive. I'd like to know the following:

1) Sounds like the drive is toast to me, you agree?
2) If it is accepted back under warranty (which it should be), before mailing, how do you remove whatever data may still be on the drive if you can't connect to it from any computer?

Thanks so much!

[ratty2013]

The clicking sound normally means the drive heads are broken, this means the drive is broken and you won't be able to recover the data yourself. If the data is important to you then you could try contacting a data recovery company see if they can recover your data from the drive so that you can transfer it to your computer, but this can be very expensive sometimes.

Hopefully you've kept a backup of your data.

[mbuchsbaum]

That's what I was afraid of! Thanks so much for your reply.

[jdco55]

Hi guys, i bought a 500Gb ministation just last dec, 2013 and just yesterday, it started making this weird clicking sound while its running, i know i can still recover my files from the drive because ive already tried it. im just a little worried because from what ive been reading about this, the clicking sound sort of means my drive is starting to die on me. some feedback would be much appreciated.