A couple weeks ago I saw a 1st generation Dell Digital Jukebox portable music player at a yard sale, and the owner wasnt asking much for it, so I took it. I charged it up, tried it a bit, and it seemed to be working just fine. Fast forward to a few days ago and it seemed to be having trouble charging (it was dead from sitting in my desk drawer a few weeks). Eventually it came to life and I was able to charge it up and have it playing continuously for 14 hours. I think original spec says the battery lasts 16, so doesnt seem to be any problem with the battery. However I started hearing the "click of death" noises coming from the players hard drive. I'm not really sure its a definite sign the hard drive is dying or not, so thats why I posted here.
The players uses a mechanical hard drive, and it came out way back in the Ipod Classic days of ~2004. So no doubt the drive could die at any time simply due to age. The hard drive seems to be designed to have about a 5-10 second delay before it spins down after you select a song to play. Its after the drive has spun down, and then spun back up from selecting another song is when the clicking occurs. If I keep the drive spinning by skipping quickly from one song to the next, the clicking doesnt occur. Also other then the clicks, the player doesnt appear to have any issues accessing or playing the music. The series of sounds it makes is in the following order...
1. short click
2. spinup sound
3. long click
4. about 7 second delay while drive spins
5. long click & spindown together
So the clicks only occur when the drive is spinning up because it needs to be accessed, or when its spinning down because its temporarily done being accessed. During constant hard drive spinning, like skipping between songs quickly, there is no clicks.
Sure I hardly paid anything for the player, and if the hard drive dies soon not a problem. However I don't want to have to take the player on a trip somewhere and discover the hard drive noises ultimately pointed to a drive that failed in the middle of the trip.
The players uses a mechanical hard drive, and it came out way back in the Ipod Classic days of ~2004. So no doubt the drive could die at any time simply due to age. The hard drive seems to be designed to have about a 5-10 second delay before it spins down after you select a song to play. Its after the drive has spun down, and then spun back up from selecting another song is when the clicking occurs. If I keep the drive spinning by skipping quickly from one song to the next, the clicking doesnt occur. Also other then the clicks, the player doesnt appear to have any issues accessing or playing the music. The series of sounds it makes is in the following order...
1. short click
2. spinup sound
3. long click
4. about 7 second delay while drive spins
5. long click & spindown together
So the clicks only occur when the drive is spinning up because it needs to be accessed, or when its spinning down because its temporarily done being accessed. During constant hard drive spinning, like skipping between songs quickly, there is no clicks.
Sure I hardly paid anything for the player, and if the hard drive dies soon not a problem. However I don't want to have to take the player on a trip somewhere and discover the hard drive noises ultimately pointed to a drive that failed in the middle of the trip.
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