WDC WD600UE-22HCT0 Clicking Problem

Hello there.

Please, could anyone tell me why is (probably) the HDD (Western Digital WDC WD600UE-22HCT0) in my new Acer TravelMate 4602WLMi making this horrible clicking noise every 30 seconds? It sounds like the HDD head parking and comes from the place where the HDD is...

When I do not work with the HDD, it makes that noise exactly every 30 seconds. In case I'm occasionally accessing data on the HDD, it clicks irregularly (max. time between clicks is still 30 secs). When I work with the HDD consecutively (e.g. video playback), then the notebook doesn't click at all.

Does anyone know what could cause that thing or even how to get rid of it? Please, help me... I'm getting nuts because of this... It's especially unpleasant when I work, because it disturbs me a lot.

Thank you very much for any information.

nvx

 

The clicking sound is generally a bad sign for your hard dive, but I have never heard of it stopping when you use the drive. It could be the drive attempting to shutdown and then being woken up... but it is unlikely hard drive would shutdown after 30 seconds. In the power management control panel what time have you set to Turn Off Hard Disks?

 

HDD Power-Off is set to 15 minutes. I played alot with the Acer ePowerManagement, but it didn't help. Please, keep in mind that it is 3 days old notebook (maybe 20 days from manufacturing).

Thanks for your reply.

nvx

 

I've now read that it is said to be because of power saving done by HDD itself. Is that possible?

 

That is not how a hard drive should sound. You shouldn't hear anything at all, except maybe the faint 'clicking' when data is being accessed/written. I'd give Acer a call about that, and have them send you a new hard drive.

 

in the uk can u just call up acer and say 'send me a new hard drive'? my new laptop has a similar defect.

 

I tried to boot from a CD with DOS today. Just out of curiousity. In Idle there was no clicking sound of the HDD except those clicks emanated exactly 10 seconds after the last access to the disk. This suggests an idea that the clicking could be a head parking, which is (as I heard) one of the power saving method used with HDDs.

Is there any expert who could confirm this conclusion?

To ChazMan421: The thing is I can not even hear the HDD work, but that clicking in Idle is relatively loud... Anyway, thank you for your reply...

nvx

 

Hmm, I've sent the notebook to the service center today and I'm quite curious about the result...

 

Yes, I will also be interested to see what they do. Be sure to tell us how long it took to get it back!

 

No problem... I'll tell you the details afterwards...

Considering that in the Sevice Center for East Europe in Brno, Czech Republic, they accept the reclamations by a courier service only, I think the notebook will be back in approx. 10 or 14 days. It depends primarily on availability of spare parts in stock, I guess. I'm not sure, but I think the guy from the Call Center told me they have to order parts from the UK...

Regards
nvx

 

Hello there,
the notebook has returned to me with an interesting result: "No trouble found." I seems to me, after reading a lot of materials on the internet, that this clicking appears due to the WD HDD feature DuraStep Ramp...

Well, as it is written in an official statement of IBM (relating to Hitachi HDDs), the disk works "as designed..."

 

Oh, I almost forgot... The NB has been delivered back after 7 days.

Regards

nvx​

 

Helllo, my name is mostafa, i just bought my laptop, and i find the problem of sound of harddisk, as if the hd can not drink a drop of water
it happend every nearly 30 seconds, I live in Egypt, and customer service will not help if there is no real crash in function,
the laptop is working great, but this sound is driving me crazy
after getting your laptop from the service, did the sound stop, and if it didn't , are you happy by its performance!?
BTY, my laptop, is china made, is this may be the problem?!
thanks
mostafa

 

Serious word of advice: That hard drive WILL and is about to fail. Backup your data and get it in for repair, meaning have them replace it with a new one.

I've had 2 failed hard drives in the past and no hard drive should be making noises like you are stating. Time will tell when that drive will fail but it is inevitable. Heed my warning on this and back it up to an external hard drive via USB or whatever now!

 

No hurry, you've just answered a post that's almost one year old.
BTW welcome to NBR.

 

On my Acer Aspire 1682WLMi the following two commands resolved the "clicking problem":

/sbin/hdparm -B255 /dev/sda
/sbin/hdparm -S0 /dev/sda

I have WDC WD600UE-00HCT0 HDD.