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HDD clicking?

Flea0
Level 10
my G750JX came with a 750 gb, 7200 rpm western digital WD7500 HDD. I added an SSD and now use the HDD as a data drive but every now and then, maybe once or twice a day, it makes a clicky, chirping sound as if it were suddenly and rather jerkily parking the heads. It's louder than any other sound I heard coming from a laptop drive...is this normal and due to some power saving measure?
ASUS G750JX -- i7-4700 - 16GB - 128GB 840 PRO SSD + 1TB HDD - Nvidia GTX 770M - 120Hz 3D glossy display
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31 REPLIES 31

hmscott
Level 12
Flea0, I ran into this problem when trying to use a longer than normal USB cable, I only had a printer length cable available, and got random problems with the drive until I could get a short cable - then the problems went away. Or, the drive might have a problem too. Did you run the drive internally for a while - did it make clicking sounds?

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/197/~/wd-external-hard-drive-makes-a-repeated-clicki...

Flea0
Level 10
I am running the drive internally, it's in the second storage drive slot 😞
ASUS G750JX -- i7-4700 - 16GB - 128GB 840 PRO SSD + 1TB HDD - Nvidia GTX 770M - 120Hz 3D glossy display

Flea0, I removed my drive and put it in an external USB 3.0 case, to keep the heat load out of the laptop. Sorry, I assumed you did the same.

Without hearing it, it is a tough call as to whether it is bad or not. Is the S.M.A.R.T data reflecting errors?

Some drives sound noisy powering up, do you spin down the drive after N minutes, as set in the Power Plan?

If you don't think it sounds right, like it is a mechanical problem, you should file a TI with Asus - maybe Asus can RMA the drive and not the whole laptop 😞

LLothar
Level 7
I have the same clicking sound. Try going to power settings and set HDD power off at never - it is 20 minutes for performance mode. I still get this sound from time to time though.

I ran SMART diagnostics and they find the hard drive in perfect condition.

Flea0
Level 10
good idea, it was set at 20 minutes even in performance mode. I'll give that a try, hopefully the setting applies to BOTH hard disks.
ASUS G750JX -- i7-4700 - 16GB - 128GB 840 PRO SSD + 1TB HDD - Nvidia GTX 770M - 120Hz 3D glossy display

LLothar
Level 7
Some extra googling suggest HDD APM (Advanced Power Management) - there are apps to turn it off and therefore disable the head parking - clicking noise.

Do you really want the drive spinning when it is idle, generating heat and drawing power?

Generally I set 3 minutes for plugged in and 1 minute for battery.

I have the ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB 1000.2GB drive, what is the model number of your drive?

Found a site describing the symptoms leading up to drive failures, and they even have recordings of the sounds to help identify the problem:

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/western_digital/WD7500

Flea0
Level 10
I don't mind a couple watts of power draw, I access it often anyway and use it while plugged in with the battery removed.
the model number is WDC WD7500BPKT-80PK4T0
luckily none of those sounds is like the one my HDD does. it only clicks once, with a snapping sound.
ASUS G750JX -- i7-4700 - 16GB - 128GB 840 PRO SSD + 1TB HDD - Nvidia GTX 770M - 120Hz 3D glossy display

LLothar, thanks for helping me remember, I used the Hitachi Data Tool to set APM on my Hitachi laptop drives permanently, and used hdparm under Linux to set it at boot time.

There is a Windows tool that has scripts to run at boot time to set the desired level of APM:

https://sites.google.com/site/disablehddapm/

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http://disablehddapm.blogspot.com/2011/12/disabling-hard-disk-drive-advanced.html

Update: the hdparm tool works on drives on the IDE/SATA bus, but not to the disk in the usb enclosure

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