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Bla123Bla123 · ‎09-20-2014

I have an ASUS G550JK that I've owned for about 2 months now. It makes some clicking noises sometimes and I want to know what it is. From what I have looked up and from talking with ASUS support it appears to be from the hard drive. ASUS support wants me to take it in to Best Buy or somewhere to have them check out the hard drive, but I do not have the time right now. It is a clicking that comes and goes, when it comes it is more of a click followed by another every few seconds at a relatively steady pace and then just stops. Everytime a click occurs, my load cycle count increases by 1. From some of the symptoms I am experiencing, it appears that the drive heads stopping because of APM or something similar is also another possibility. Does anybody have experience enough to know if it could be APM or if I should be worried about possible hard drive failure? Also, is there a way to check if it is indeed APM? I have tried looking online but can't seem to find a way to disable, or at least make it less aggressive, to see if it may indeed be the cause of the sound?

toronto699 · ‎09-20-2014

google GSmartControl to check your hard drive but to me hard drive sounds normal GSmartControl is easy to use

NemesisChild · ‎09-20-2014

HDD clicking is not normal, you need to find the time to have it inspected.

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Bla123Bla123 · ‎09-21-2014

I may go get it checked out next weekend when I have some time, and will run the GSmartControl test and post the results. I am trying to find out if my hard drive has this occur due to APM reasons, but am unable to find anything specific to my hard drive. My hard drive is a HGST HTS721075A9E630. Any help on figuring out if APM could be the cause would be great!

I would love to be able to actually determine if APM could be the issue or not since I need my laptop for school and would rather not have any time without it if possible.

toronto699 · ‎09-21-2014

if any 1 test in GSmartControl fails , replace the hard drive , GSmart does many tests on HD

Bla123Bla123 · ‎09-21-2014

I completed both test types and both of them completed without error.

Bla123Bla123 · ‎09-25-2014

I am pretty sure that it is definitely APM now. I got a program called hdparm which adjusts APM settings (although it mut be redone everytime a computer goes to sleep or is shut down), what my results have been are my load/unload cycle going up by only 1 for everytime I restarted my computer and no clicking sounds what so ever. I have forgotten to redo it a few times after my PC has gone to sleep today and what has happened is that my load/unload cycle count has jumped up a bit. No clicking sounds yet, but it does appear to just be APM that was making those sounds. I plan on keeping an eye on it and going to check it checked out right away if the clicking returns. I was planning on maybe getting it checked out this weekend just to be safe, but I don't think I will have the time. Maybe next weekend if nothing pops up.

UltraNEO_ · ‎09-28-2014

From first hand experience...

IF my any of HDD started 'clicking', the first and foremost thing I'd do is backup any valuable data. Usually when those things start clicking, it's a physical malfunction and death follows shortly.. Click of death as they say. Only long term fix is a warranty replacement.

Bla123Bla123 · ‎09-14-2016

Super old thread, but here is the end result of my issue: I ignored it. It eventually went away on its own and I just recently (a few weeks ago) changed the HDD to a SSD, but that was because I was getting annoyed with speed issues, not because I experienced any issues with the HDD.

Also, I didn't have any valuable data on here... I don't store valuable data on computer storage drives. Everything that is valuable enough that I want to not lose is backed up to cloud always. 99% of what I have stored on here is unimportant (mostly games and engineering programs) with all the important stuff (files for engineering programs) backed up. Because of this, I didn't care enough to be proactive about trying to fix it 😛

Bla123Bla123 · ‎09-14-2016

Super old thread, but here is the end result of my issue: I ignored it. It eventually went away on its own and I just recently (a few weeks ago) changed the HDD to a SSD, but that was because I was getting annoyed with speed issues, not because I experienced any issues with the HDD.

Also, I didn't have any valuable data on here... I don't store valuable data on computer storage drives. Everything that is valuable enough that I want to not lose is backed up to cloud always. 99% of what I have stored on here is unimportant (mostly games and engineering programs) with all the important stuff (files for engineering programs) backed up.

What is this clicking sound?