Strange noises from HDD

mrjack

mrjack

VIP Member
I'm getting these strange clicks from my HDD. It has to be the HDD cause when I hear the click and watch a video the video stops for a second and then continues. I recently re-installed Windows XP Pro SP2 and the clicks started a few days ago. Is this serious, should I be worried. The HDD is about 1 or 1 1/2 year old (Maxtor DiamondMax 9+ 80Gb, Ultra ATA/133, 8Mb Cache).
 
If things stop for a second when you hear the clicks, that's almost a sure sign of a bad drive... Run their Maxblast software, the long test. If you get an error(which I'm quite sure you will) contact them and tell them the error. If they are anything like when I had all my problems with the drives, they should replace it no problem.
 
Well, I have been planning on getting a bigger HDD soon with the GF6600GT and PSU. The thing is I don't get these clicks when playing games, just when listening to music or watching some videos and stuff like that. Maybe bad sectors?
 
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You shouldn't get those clicks and such until you hit the bad sector(s) So...if the games are on clean sectors, it shouldn't give you a problem... But of course, it also depends on how bad the drive is...
 
yea its the hdd... probably because its the only real thing with moving parts inside your computer except for fans. make sure fans are free to move without wires and such getting in the way.
if its not buy a new hard drive and put all your files on it and such... or burn your files to dvd as a backup or something
 
I just downloaded MaxBlast 4 and there were no tests available whatsoever. Do I have to get a previous version?
 
Did you get the boot disk? I don't know what they have anymore but there should be a bootable image you just write to a floppy.

As for versions, I probably have a copy somewhere, but who knows where since I cleaned my room out :-/
 
The clicking noises were gone for a while, that or I just didn't notice them. Now they're back, video or audio isn't stopped but I get the clicking sounds regularly depending on what I do, of course.

E.g. when I download via BitTorrent (Elephants Dream, completely legal, CGI) and watch some music video, I hear clicking noises.

EDIT:
I found this on Maxtor's homepage.

I also read that some newer HDD's have a feature that moves the "head" if it's inactive for a short while (15 seconds or so) to decrease risk of wearout.
 
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