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
External hard drive grinding
If your external hard drive 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
A portable external has no fan, no pump and no moving part other than the drive itself, which removes the ambiguity that exists on every other device here: if it is grinding, it is the drive. What you are hearing is the heads in contact with a rotating platter, scraping the magnetic layer off it and turning it into debris that then circulates inside the sealed chamber and damages surfaces that were previously intact. This is the one symptom on this site where the correct action is measured in seconds.
A portable external is a normal drive inside a plastic shell with a USB bridge board. The bridge fails far more often than the drive does, which is why a dead external is better news than a dead internal.
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 an external hard drive
- Unplug it now, before reading the rest of this. Every second of rotation is removing more of the surface your files are written on.
- Once it is unplugged, note whether the noise started after a drop, after a long period unused, or with no warning at all.
- That is the entire safe check list. There is nothing else that can be tested without spinning it again.
What not to do
Do not power it on again to check whether it is still doing it, or to grab one important file first. Both are completely natural and both are how a partial recovery becomes no recovery. The file you wanted is not worth the surface it costs to reach for it.
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 an external hard drive
- External hard drive clicking
- External hard drive beeping
- External hard drive won't spin up
- External hard drive not showing up
- External hard drive shows up but won't open
- Dropped external hard drive
- Water damaged external hard drive
- Formatted external hard drive by mistake
- Deleted files from external hard drive
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.