loud clicking noise from HD

pete_g · January 5th, 2002, 10:06 PM

My HD, IBM 40gig 7200rpm, is making a loud clicking noise pretty much at random. It's not the normal sound it used to do. The HD is only 4 months old. Can it already be failling?

One day, it just started to do this. The only thing I can think wich is different from when it didnt do this sound, is now the HD is fairly full. Can this noise be associated to a full HD? If not, what are the steps to take.

Thanks in advance

ryogenetic · January 5th, 2002, 10:11 PM

Silly, but have you ran scan disk recently?

I am thinking bad sectors maybe?

FreakyOCR · January 5th, 2002, 10:12 PM

My dad's 75GXP 45 GB started doing wierd clicking things, then the WIn2k profile corrupted....

Bad sector... had to do a DFT fix that formatted the entire drive...

Back-up everything you want or need.... NOW!

After you have everything backed up go and download dft extract toa floppy and boot up with it...

January 5th, 2002, 10:13 PM

Smokin' !!

Do you get a funny smell like something not quite kosher?

Just kidding.

Yeah, defrag it. Since it still under warranty, I wouldn't worry.

Dbest · January 5th, 2002, 10:22 PM

We'll I also have the same problem as you pete_g the only difference is mine is a 60gb HD, anyway I don't think a scandisk will be much of a help since I've already done this an the clicking sound is still there.I'll try a defrag(lets se if that helps). Is there a way to know if the HD is dying???

LJE2 · January 5th, 2002, 10:29 PM

I had an IBM 60GB 7200 RPM hard drive go bad just recently, it didn't make any noises, it just started crashing alot, then It would crash every time I used Netscape 4.7, but not with Netscape 6.1, then finally it wouldn't boot. It was less than a year old, IBM has a utility on their website that can check your drive, assuming you can boot to it. You can also get an online RMA if it's still under warranty, (just type in the serial number and it will tell you if it's under warranty, and they will send you an RMA number by email). They weren't real fast about it, they took a couple of weeks to send me a new one after I sent my damaged one back, but I did get a new one and it works fine.

pete_g · January 5th, 2002, 11:39 PM

I'll try a scandisk and a defrag and see if that helps

Thanks

SecretNinja999 · January 5th, 2002, 11:41 PM

My hard drive made a similar loud clicking sound and I discovered that it was a physical problem with the hard drive. Unfortunatley it wasn't under warranty anymore and I lost all of the data. Good thing for back-ups. Now I have a new 30gb hard drive which hasn't failed me yet. It could be a physical problem, though try all the other solutions before you consider it.

FalcomPSX · January 5th, 2002, 11:50 PM

IBM recently had a lawsuit filed against them for a unusually high failure rate of their 75GXP series of hard drives...

pete_g · January 6th, 2002, 01:36 AM

Ok here are the results,

Scandisk

didnt even have the chance to see if there were bad sectors (winXP) When it finished, it showed the results for like 0.2 seconds, then rebooted. I heard no loud click during this process

defrag

During the first part of the defrag (moving files accoding to xp) alot of click noise could be heard, but for the rest of the defrag, it seemed fine

Well its still doing the click noise, it seems less but i can't really confirm that. I'll try the IBM utility to see what it tells me.

edit: I cant seem to find the utility on the IBM web page. Can someone direct me to it?