Read this before you do anything else
Switch it off immediately. This is the worst noise a drive makes.
Grinding means physical contact between the head assembly and the platter surface while the platters are turning. It is the one noise that is actively destroying the recorded surface as you listen to it. Not risking damage, causing it. Material removed from a platter is gone, and no lab recovers what is no longer physically there. Of every symptom on this site, this is the one where the seconds genuinely count.
Emergency
CCTV recorder grinding
If your CCTV recorder is making a grinding noise, the most useful thing on this page is above this paragraph, and it is free. What follows is what the fault usually turns out to be, how recoverable this class of failure is, and what it would cost, including the cases we would tell you to take elsewhere.
What this usually turns out to be
Recorders are built to a price and cooled by a small fan that runs continuously for years in a ceiling space or a comms cupboard, so a grinding recorder is a fan far more often than it is a drive. If it is the drive, the situation is worse than the same fault in a computer, because the recorder keeps writing to the damaged surface continuously and is therefore both destroying the platter and overwriting the footage you need with new footage.
Recorders write in a manufacturer's own format and loop over the oldest footage continuously. The clock on a CCTV job is retention, not hardware.
Head crash
The heads have come down onto the platters and are scraping the magnetic surface away as the stack spins.
Debris circulating inside the drive
Material shed by a previous failure is being dragged between head and platter, scoring the surface on every rotation.
Collapsed bearing
The platter stack is no longer turning true, bringing the surface into the head's path.
What to check first on a CCTV recorder
- Stop recording through the unit's menu first. That removes the overwrite risk regardless of which part is grinding.
- Listen at the fan vent and at the drive position. Recorder fans are small, high-pitched and constant; a failing drive tracks the recording activity.
- Work out the retention window and the date of the incident before deciding anything.
What not to do
Do not export the footage you need from a drive that is genuinely grinding, tempting as that is. An export reads long continuous stretches of the platter, which on a scored surface is how the remaining good areas get damaged too.
How recoverable this is
The narrowest and least optimistic of any symptom here, and the fair framing is that outcome is decided largely by how long it ran making that noise. Where scoring is confined to regions your files do not occupy, recovery of the rest is realistic. Where it has cut through the area holding them, that part is not recoverable by anyone, and you should be sceptical of a lab that says otherwise.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- How long it was left running while grinding, which is the single biggest factor
- Which regions of the surface were scored, and whether your files live there
- Whether debris has contaminated otherwise intact surfaces
We will not give you a percentage for your device, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can know what is recoverable until the media has been imaged and read. What is above describes this class of failure; your drive gets its own answer after an assessment, in writing, at no cost.
What it costs
Assessed free, then referred at no charge
Cleanroom mechanical work
Clicking, seized or head-crashed drives need internal mechanical work in a controlled environment. We don't have one, so we assess it, tell you what we found in writing, and refer it on. That referral costs you nothing here.
Nothing is charged until you have seen a fixed quote for your actual device and agreed to it, and the assessment that produces it is free.
Other faults on a CCTV recorder
Grinding or scraping on other devices
Next step
Tell us what failed.
Free assessment. Fixed quote before recovery starts. No recovery, no fee. Sydney drop-off or Australia-wide by tracked post.