External HDD makes clicking noises and then freezes up

[Ronnie.1]

I got a 300 Gigs Seagate external HDD recently. Problem is, I got it as a gift from my uncle who lives in the US, while I live in India, which means I don't have any clue about the model number or anything. It looks like this though:
http://www.yelp.com/redir?url=http://www.gearlog.com/images/254.jpg

When I first got it, it was Mac formatted because it was used with an iMac so I had to format it and was able to assign a drive letter to it and back up nearly 150 Gigs of stuff onto it. So far so good.

For the last one month now, when I power it on, it makes these weird clicking noises (mechanical clicking) for 1-2 minutes after which it goes silent. When it goes silent, I am able to open the main HDD directory on my PC, but I am not able to open any of the sub directories - the moment I do, it freezes up and I have to close Windows Explorer. Also, the blue LED which is supposed to glow stops glowing after powering on.

I can't get help from Seagate here, because I don't know the model number, or even the year of purchase. Could someone help out here?

 

[Hefemeister]

Well the hard drive is failing.

you can try to hook it up internally to your computer if you have a desktop but that will most likely result in the same behavior. Pulling the drive from the case will also allow you to see the model number of the hd.

If you have important data on it you can try the freezer trick in attempts to retrieve data from it.

 

[Ronnie.1]

So, does that mean I will not be able to use the hard drive ever again? I don't have crucial data per se - the data is all there on my comp's hard drive. But I would really like to get it up and running if it is possible.

 

[joelm3103]

So, does that mean I will not be able to use the hard drive ever again? I don't have crucial data per se - the data is all there on my comp's hard drive. But I would really like to get it up and running if it is possible.

That's exactly what he's saying. The HDD is going to fail sooner or later to the point it would not boot up. Just make sure you got all your data backed up before this happens.

 

[Ronnie.1]

Oh snap