[Linok]

Hey everyone,

I think I've got a hard drive(s) that's making a clicking noise everynow and then. It sounds almost list the drive head is parking itself then going back to work. The system is still running ok and I haven't been able to tell if its only clicking during heavy IO transfer or not (XP page filing makes that near impossible to tell).

So I was wondering if anything had any info that would help. More importantly, should I start shopping for a new hard drive soon?

[Nitestick]

clicking can be taken as a sign of a dying drive but as most drives wear they all make clicking noises. it just depends on how violent it is as to whether its hdd failure. if it gets increasingly worse as you don't seem to think its to bad yet, then you will have to think about doing a backup and getting a new drive

[Linok]

Well, the clicking is pretty bad, especially during shutdown. Currently, I have 2 drives in the system, so backing up isn't such an issue (at least for my critical stuff, my system does nightly backups to the secondary drive).

The thing is, it just started the noise this morning, so do hard drives normally die slower than this, or is it this sudden?

[Nitestick]

that is pretty sudden. the noise develops gradually if its just from normal wear and tear. the only problem is only you can judge the sound so it is up to you to determine if you think it is hdd failure. if you don't think there would be any significant data loss from a hdd failure then you may as well just keep using it. you could RMA it if it is under warranty.

[Linok]

I'm 95% sure it's the hdd, I just wish I could tell which one it was. I use the comp. as a development server for different web apps my company develops, and if it's the backup, no major loss, however, if it's the primary, I'll lose the OS and stuff, making my day kinda to a "not so much fun stage".

I think I'll run it all day tomorrow, just to see which one dies. That way, I'll be able to fix it over the weekend and deal with the downtime monday.

[Nitestick]

disconnect the backup drive. if the sound stops then you know it was the backup. if the sound continues then clearly it is the system drive

[jogoz]

be sure to back it up with a burner , dont trust the HD , what kind of HD is it anyway?

[Nitestick]

of course it is useful to have backups on dvd's as well but don't trust them either. in fact trust optical discs less than hard discs because they have a higher rate of failure.

[poorman]

Check the SMART status on your HD. It will tell you if you are having read/ write errors. If that is so, stop using the drive. Google for: ATSTRA32, good app. for checking SMART status.