Disk Utility reports "missing thread record" on my external HDD I have an external 500 GB HDD that's about five years old. I just turned it on and it made a bunch of clicking noises and failed to spin up immediately, though it did so after a few seconds.

To be safe, I figured I'd run Verify Disk in Disk Utility to see if anything was wrong with it. It reported the following:

Missing thread record (id = 14183615)
The volume OWC On The Go was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.


It's now running the repair process, which it says will take about 1.5 hours.

Is this a serious error and/or should I do anything else? The fact that it seemed to have trouble spinning up is a little concerning...



UPDATE: The repair process stopped and now it says:

Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.


Sounds serious. Is the drive failing?
That sound you hear is often referred to as "The Click of Death": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

Head reader errors, motor errors, anything of this sort indicate physical failure, and possibly imminent device death. Get your data backed up off of that disk NOW.

Afterwards, and only afterwards, check and see if it's still in warranty. :)