Hitachi external hard drive click/beep isn't recognized

I left my Hitachi 640gb hard drive on all night and now when I power it on I hear clicking and beeping and skipping and my laptop won't recognize it. it must've overheated or something. I've had it for two years and it's worked flawlessly, and i've never dropped it once. But i'm really worried b/c I have over 500gb of important files on it and I don't want to pay upwards of 700$ for data recovery. Is there any thing I can do to fix it on my own, and any explanations of what it could be would be much appreciated. It it dying? Could it be faulty hardware? Has my power supply burned out? Insufficient power?

 

Why would the enclosure cause the drive to click and beep?

 

I hope so. I'll buy a new enclosure and test it. But it keeps clicking and skipping like there's something wrong internally. I just hope the data is still there.

 

Also from what I hear the clicking usually happens from dropping it... is it possible to happen from overheating b/c I did leave it on all night. And if it is just the enclosure then my data should still be on the disc right? I can check b/c nothing will recognize it.

 

anyone else?

 

ok now I think im screwed. I kept messing with the drive, and now it wont spin at all...just a few pulsating beeps then it stops. Is there any hope for my drive?

 

For the record leaving it on all night wouldn't have killed it unless it's caked with dust or covered in stuff. My external HDD gets left on 24/7 and has never skipped a beat. AFAIK external HDDs will spin down when not in use by default. So unless it was left doing a file transfer the whole time, it's highly unlikely it even got warm.

 

Well I had it on all day, then the next time I turned it off then on it start skipping so I guess I just had lesser quality model or bad really luck. It wasn't covered and it had stop transferring early in the day. Now all it does it power on and beep.

 

I would still say put the drive in a PC or find another external enclosure.

 

Yeah, i'm about to purchase another enclosure now. But like I said, once I power it now it doesn't even click any or try to spin anymore so I don't know how a new enclosure or psu for fix that, but I still want to try all my options first.

 

well I oughht a sata to usb cable and connected to my laptop and all it does is hum...no spinning no magnet...I think the head crashed. Anyone know of any good recovery services? Anyone tried datahounds?

 

bump

 

I believe data recovery is somewhat expensive. Somewhere in the range of $500 for a couple hundred gigs.

The main challenge is removing the platters without damaging them. For that you need a clean room which many people fail to mention. Anyone who thinks they can remove the platters or take a drive apart needs to do some homework because it only takes a single particle of dust to destroy a drive permanently.

I'm not experienced with HDDs so I couldn't tell you who to go to but local is a good place to start and work outwards. There's a place capable of data recovery within an hour of me, and I'm in the middle of nowhere. Brick and mortar prices are likely to be lower than sending it to somebody with less chance of further damaging the drive.

Also if it just hums, either the mechanism itself has locked the platter up, or the spindle motor has burnt out.

 

Well...it doesn't look like I have a choice at this point. It appears my drive is physically beyond my repaid. It doesn't spin or even magnetize like it did before, or make any noise expect a hum. And there's probably platter damage.

 

Read my edit.

 

iIf the the mechanism locked the platter, or if the spindle motor has burnt out, do you think there's platter damage? And thanks for the advice.