External Hard Drive Problem? Clicking Noise?

I’ve had this 500GB HP external HD for about 3 years now. In the past 6 months or so, there’s only a CHANCE it will work when plugged in. I thought it was because it only had like 5GB left of space.. so I deleted 75GB of movies but it made no difference.
I primarily use to to run music in itunes. (So i need this Hard Drive to play music in itunes since the music is on it).
When it doesn’t work when I plug in, i usually get a clicking/ticking sound from the hard drive. It ticks about every 2 seconds, right on queue from the last one.
I have Win 7 x64.
Anyone have this problem before?
Answer #1
I had that problem too on WD Passport 500GB…
Dunno how but it stopped…
Answer #2
that noise is called the “click of death” and most likely your drive is dying
get “Hard Disk Sentinel” and check the drives health
and backup any data on the drive as it could become unreadable at any time
Answer #3
Shuffle. replied:
When it doesn't work when I plug in, i usually get a clicking/ticking sound from the hard drive. It ticks about every 2 seconds, right on queue from the last one.
thats on its way out, back up your data now before you loose it
Answer #4
my hard drive was doing the same thing i had all my movie music tv shows on it and lost it all cause i didnt really take ntice of it so if you dont wanna loose it back it up trust me its a pain having to download everything again since the megaupload thing cause you cant just paste the links into jdownloader and forgetting it for the day evry 5 minutes your putting in a captcha
Answer #5
edwoodweb replied: that noise is called the "click of death" and most likely your drive is dying
This – definately backup any data asap
Answer #6
Thanks guys. Gonna get a new hard drive soon.