Immediate attention required

If your hard drive is making clicking noises — your computer may also freeze or take too long to boot up — it's an indicator that your hard drive may be going bad. These symptoms mean that it is likely not going to last much longer and may be completely unusable within a very short amount of time.

Note: the worst case scenario is that your files and programs may be unrecoverable very soon.

If you get your computer to us (or have us pick it up) when it first starts exhibiting these symptoms, we can usually save your data (files and programs) intact. With each attempt to restart your computer after this first happens, you are considerably decreasing the possibility of recovering your files. If addressed within a reasonable amount of time, you can be back up and going within a few hours.

What to do if your hard drive is clicking

1. Shut down your computer, and do not attempt to restart it.
2. Replace your hard drive.