Hey guys, I have a Western Digital Net Center. When I turn it on it tries three times to spin up, every time it tries there is a loud clicking sound. Then it just gives up while the power light flashes blue. Power light should be solid when its ready. The drive is 2 1/2 years old and never had a problem, its also plugged into a surge protector. I tried the quick reset and the long reset and the problem persists. Also the network wont recognize the drive. Any suggestions or is it unsalvagable ? Thanks

That "loud clicking sound" is not a good thing.  Unfortunately  drives fail, sometimes with warning and sometimes not.  I'd try to salvage the data ASAP but it sounds like it might be too late for that if you can't access it at all. Regardless I wouldn't have a lot of faith in the drive going forward.  Does it still have a warranty?  I don't have any WD drives, but you might want to check their web site to see if they have any disk utilities that might help recover or diagnose.   You might also try removing the drive and putting it in a separate enclosure but  don't really think that would help.  Might try powering it up while horizontal instead of vertical which I've seen work a time or two.   Folks used to claim putting  failing drives in the freezer helped...some claim it works other claim myth.  

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

I assume that it is not under warranty as it is 2.5 years old.  I would take it apart and see if you can pull the hard drive out and then hook it up to another external enclosure.  That will show if the power supply is bad or if it is a bad drive.  I suspect that the drive is bad though.  But once you have it open you could get a new drive for much cheaper than buying a whole new unit.  Look to newegg for parts and you will need to know if it is a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive and make sure that it is sata.  Worst case if you break it when taking it apart or putting it back together you are in the same position that you are in now.

Thanks guys, I will try some of these ideas. In the future I'm going to have a backup for my backup. I had like 40 gigs of music on only that WD so that it would be accessible by any pc in the house. Replicating that is gonna take months.

I know that is does not help you now, but I like DVD's for backup as the cost / gig is much cheaper and you can store it off site so that if your place got burned down, robbed or whatever you still have your pictures and other stuff that you don't edit often safe.

Thanks, I'm definitly going to do something like that. I also ordered a new external and some USB flash drives.