When working for a large Network hardware Co, we had that dreaded clicking sound impacting a whole shipment of desktop PC’s that we had to install, and if I recall correctly, the issue was one of alignment of the read/write arm inside the hdd case. It would simply be out of true, and the clicking was caused by the arm trying to track correctly and failing. The solution, given to us by the manufacturer was to tap the center of the drive lightly with a small hammer, as that realigned the arm, and then boot the drive, recover all the data and ship the faulty drive back for RMA. Most times this solution worked, but occasionally it failed and you had a doorstop.
hope the recovery went smoothly.
i think your HD won’t last long… that’s almost the as mine, i tried not to touch it for a month and after that, it got busted…
Ugh…dont remind me of that horrible clicking… 