Short version: your odds depend less on “which tool” and more on “how much more you spin that clicking drive.”
A few angles that haven’t really been stressed yet:
1. Clicking pattern actually matters
You mentioned loud, repeating clicks. I’d add one nuance:
- Fast, metronome‑like clicking from the second it spins = almost certainly a head problem.
- Slower, irregular ticks that start only under load can sometimes be borderline electronics or weak sectors.
That second case is the only scenario where a short, carefully controlled imaging attempt has any real justification. If yours goes into instant machine‑gun clicking the moment it powers, skip straight to lab or write‑off.
I actually disagree slightly with the “one BIOS check, then decide forever” idea. You can do:
- One power‑up to confirm ID / capacity.
- One short imaging test limited to the first few GB.
If the drive hard‑locks or the click worsens, you stop there. That small extra test can tell you if it is even imageable without meaningfully increasing risk, as long as you are disciplined.
2. Why imaging from cold matters more than people think
Platters and heads expand as they warm. With marginal heads, that expansion can push them from “barely tracking” to “crashing.” So if you decide to risk DIY:
- Let the drive sit powered off until it is totally at room temperature.
- Power on only when your imaging tool is ready.
- Start cloning immediately and avoid stopping and starting the job.
Repeated short power cycles are worse than a single continuous read on a marginal drive, because each spin‑up slams the actuator home.
3. Where Disk Drill fits in, realistically
Everyone has said “make an image.” The practical issue is which tool does not absolutely punish a weak drive.
Disk Drill pros:
- Nice at working from images; once you have a clone, it is very user friendly.
- Can create a byte‑for‑byte image in a straightforward way, so you are not poking the failing drive through Explorer.
- Good at rebuilding file trees and previewing photos from that image later.
Disk Drill cons:
- It is still software that talks through the OS stack. On drives that lock up the bus, you will get freezes and disconnects. It does not replace hardware imagers that labs use.
- Default settings are not always gentle. You have to configure it to image first and avoid “quick scan” that jumps around the disk.
- On heavily degraded media, it can hang rather than degrade nicely, so you need to be ready to pull power if the system becomes unresponsive.
Compare that with the vibe from @voyageurdubois and @mike34: they are thinking more in terms of lab‑grade hardware imaging and strict “no touch” if you really care. @mikeappsreviewer did a good job spelling out heads / platters / lab costs but, like most of us, comes from the perspective that physical damage is not a software problem.
So if your drive is still detected, spins fully, and you have accepted the risk:
- Use Disk Drill’s disk image feature to target the failing drive.
- Save that image to a totally separate healthy disk.
- Keep reads linear, avoid scanning the full file system tree directly from the failing disk.
If Disk Drill chokes very early or the drive drops, do not start trying three more imaging tools. At that point, continued attempts are just lab‑chance erosion.
4. A slightly different decision rule
Others framed it as “life‑changing loss vs not.” I would add one more filter:
- If even a partial recovery of photos / key documents is worth a few hundred dollars, then physical clicking + unstable detection should already bias you to a lab.
- Only go DIY if you are emotionally prepared to lose everything and treat any recovered file as a bonus.
That mindset tends to prevent the usual spiral of “OK, this tool failed, let me try one more,” which is what really grinds the drive to dust.
5. Why I would not wait weeks
Where I do agree strongly with them: do not let this sit for months while you “think about it.” Drives that have already entered a clicking failure mode rarely get better with age. Lubricants dry, heads stick, and when you finally do decide to power it up again, it is often worse.
Give yourself a deadline:
- Within 24–48 hours, either send it to a lab, or
- Do one cold, controlled imaging attempt with something like Disk Drill, or
- Accept it as lost and move on.
No half‑measures, no repeated random plugging back into Windows to see if it “magically works today.”
So in practice for your case:
- Do not boot Windows from that drive ever again.
- If you are going to risk DIY, do a single, cold start with an imaging‑first tool such as Disk Drill, configured gently.
- Once that run fails or finishes, retire the original drive. All further experiments happen on the image.
- If that still sounds too risky for the files you described, skip all of it and let a lab make the first move instead.