Corrupt sectors of hard drive

[COLOR="Indigo"]Could the knocking sound it makes be caused by corrupt sections or is it a definite indication that it's physically damaged? I'm leaning towards believing it's physically damaged, but I'm really not sure.

~Lyssa[/COLOR]

I doubt that would be caused by corrupt sectors. You see, corrupt sectors are basically messed up portions inside the hard drive which has has its data scrambled around. That's pretty easy to fix because you just need to replace that data with clean data. Having corrupt data sectors inside the drive should have no affect on noise. The noise you hear is probably the hard drive reader (that little pin you see) being worn out and loose. If that pin is unable to contact the surface of the hard drive correctly, you'll have problems reading the data.

The only way to fix this is to replace the pin (which isn't worth it) or get a new external drive.