Is this the click of death [audio]

H

HydraHeaded

New Member
My hard disk starts clicking, but doesn't do it continuously, sometimes it makes a few clicking noises and then stops for about fifteen minutes, sometimes it makes them every two minutes or so. I have two HDDs, both SATA, and I don't know which one is clicking. I have made an audio recording:

http://plunder.com/e7f7479f99

or

http://www.plunder.com/Hard-Disk-Clicking-Sound-download-e7f7479f99.htm

Its an .amr file. Is it the click of death? Oh btw, both are Seagate. One is around 2 and another is around 3 years old, and they are all pretty much packed.
 
If you can change that file into a mp3 or wav file then i would gladly listen to it but if both drives have any type of clicking then you have the click of death and need to get them replaced.
 
Thank you for changing the file format.

Yes, that would be the click of death. Replace the drive before it totally dies on you.
 
johnb35 said:
Thank you for changing the file format.

Yes, that would be the click of death. Replace the drive before it totally dies on you.
Click to expand...

John's right. Both Seagate. Are they 7200.11's by any chance? Updating the firmware might help, but it also won't stop the click of death as that's a physical failure (or an imminent one) But I want to know what size they are and you use them for, to find a suitable replacement. Without knowing that, I'm inclined to suggest the Samsung F3 drives. They come in 1TB and 500GB. You also have the WD Caviar Black/Green drives, which you can find 2TB and 3TB variants of (for the greens anyway)
 
One is an 80 GB one, the other is a 1 TB one. I boot from the 80 GB one, and that's the one that is clicking. The 1 TB one I think is 7200.11, I'll have to check, but I do remember after I bought it I had read in quite a few places that it was facing too many problems.

This morning I got out my previous hard disk which I don't use now, one that is not SATA but has that large data cable, and I attached it and tried to get some more data out (I had already backed up the important data but then I remembered that my email passwords are stored in the browser and I had forgotten to backup the application data folder). The OS in this older hard disk is also XP, and when I tried to access the partition that is particularly problematic, the computer stopped responding. After a reboot, when I tried to copy some images, it instead copied some other images from another folder. I thought now the drive has had it.

But then I booted from a Linux live CD, and it worked perfectly. There were times when the copying process would stop for a while, but I was able to get a whole lot of non-important data out as well. Now I've reconnected the problematic drive and booted from it, and it is working without any glitches, no clicks at all! I thought maybe I'm mistaken, but its four or five hours of continuous usage now and still there isn't a single click.

Is it possible for the OS to make the hard disk work too much so that it freezes? I think Vista had some such feature, which was accused of thrashing the hard disk.

I'm planning to format the entire drive now.
 
Clicking generally indicates parts have failed in the hard drive. Is the drive under three years old? If you have a receipt which proves the date you bought it Seagate may replace the drive for you.
 
2048Megabytes said:
Clicking generally indicates parts have failed in the hard drive. Is the drive under three years old? If you have a receipt which proves the date you bought it Seagate may replace the drive for you.
Click to expand...

Its more than three years old, if I remember correctly. I checked all three drives with Seatools again, and only the 1 TB one is shown as Smart Pass. Which means the older 40 GB one, which is more than 8 years old, is also going to crash some day. The older drive has lasted much longer, but then I haven't used it much for the past two years.
 
I wouldn't be using the 40gb drive right now. I would only be using it for testing purposes only. I would be leary about trusting drives that are more then 4-5 years old.
 
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