or, put more simply, do the sounds (clicking every two to three seconds
just before spinning up and then spinning down, which it continues to do
over the course of a minute or two) give any clue as to what is going
on? Given these sounds, could I be pretty certain of what is going on,
or could there be several different things that could be going on?

dipdog <dipdog.3282u2@no.email.invalid> wrote:
The drive is having problems reading the platters and the clicking
is the drive recalibrating in an attempt to see if that will help.

Yes, the drive is having problems reading the platters.

Its possible that the drive might not be getting power properly etc.