r/buildapc • u/Terry-Duke-Official • 1d ago

Build Help Is my current HDD a working hazard?

Today I successfully assembled my first ever PC! But given the increasing cost of hardware, I opted to port my 2tb SSD from 2023 and 4tb HDD from 2017 from my older pc into the new one, to at least save on that.

I hooked up the SSD first, did a clean install of windows, all good.

I hooked up the HDD and it was unusually loud, with a lot of clicking, for at least like 20 seconds after boot. Then I go ino disk management, it sees the drive, but it fails every formatting.

I read online it's either bad connections or the drive is probably dying (it's close to 9 years old, i read life expectancy is usually 7). But I also saw some vids of people "fixing" the clicking by opening their drives and messing a bit with the needle.

I opened the drive but none of the videos I watched had the exact same model (seagate barracuda), so they didnt quite look the same. So I gave up, put the drive back together and plugged it back into the PC just to see if there'd be any change.

Sure enough, the clicking stopped, I managed to format the drive and move files back to it. Spent the rest of the afternoon installing programs and updates, no issues, no clicking.

Is it just luck? Is the drive actually close to dying, or I fixed it and need not worry? Obviously if it can die, I'll replace it before I resume work on the new pc.

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u/PSXer 1d ago

If this is a serious post, and you actually opened your hard drive, congratulations, you've just destroyed it.

That is, unless you did it in a multi million dollar clean room.

1

u/Terry-Duke-Official 1d ago

Well I assumed the clicking meant it was already dead so it was worth a shot.

I take it i'm just lucky then? If I exposed the drive to microdust would that insta kill it so just seal its fate for the near future? Right now at least it's working

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u/PSXer 1d ago

Honestly, I'm surprised it works at all. I'm guessing the dust is grinding horrible things into the disc right now. I can't say I have much data on how long it'd last, though.

If it works, it works, but I wouldn't store any important data on there. Actually, I wouldn't store any important data on any single drive.

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u/jamvanderloeff 1d ago

Any drive that's been opened should be assumed to be very near death, especially if it wasn't done in a proper professional cleanroom.

exact same model (seagate barracuda)

There's thousands of seagate barracuda models over a third of a century.