Hadr drive clicking, ticking.

Hello,

I have read several topics(mainli on this forum) over the net about the problem of clicking HDD but I'm still not sure if the noise described by them is similar to mine.

I have head my XPS M1530 for about a month. During that time the HDD(Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm 200GB ST9200420ASG)worked perfectly OK no diesturbing noises despite the noise of parking header, which is normal and not annoying for me. Something happend on monday and the drive started clicking. Thta's not a continous click it happens quite rearly and irregular(once a 30 mintes, once an hour) , only when the drive is in idle and probably attempts to park the header. The click is similar to clicking when the drive parks heder but its a bit louder and sounds like a click of typewriter key,old clock etc). The click leastes less then one second and then there's the described period of 30 minuts/few hours when thre's no single click. Despite teh click the drive performs perfectly OK. No hangs of system, freezes,bad sectors, lost data. SMART is ok, the Seatools utility indicates nothing.The other noises from the HDD are normal and similar to those I colud expect from HDD.

Is this noise normal, and similar to those described in other topics ? I dont know, but maybe it's just the other kind of sound emited by parking hedaer ?
I'm qute concearned about that, cos' if they were normal why tehy would start after a month. The laptop did not fall or did not have any situations taht could cause a HDD malufunction.

I contacted Seagate and one of their technicians told me that may be a faulty device, the second told me that's nothing serious and advised me to run Seatools from time to time. The Dell technician also advised me not to worry.

That would be it. I;d be gratefuf for your opinions. Sorry for my English.

W2K

 

I am no expert at this but I read you can resolve it by settings in Notebook Hardware Control, HD Tune Pro or in the bios.

You may want to try it.

 

I think this would help but I don't want to disable UAC in Vista, and using NHC or other software would require to do so... the Bios options do not work at all, but this is typical... By now the noise is not disturbing at all... but i'm worried only about the fact that the drive has does not work perfect .

 

I'd advise to start backing up your data. It is a good practice regardless of ticking or no ticking. In my experience that is always a death sentence for your hard drive but there is no prognosis, it could die in a week or last another year.

 

Well, meybe you'r right, but to be honest every HDD is bound to fail some day, no metter clicking.

 

mine clicks a little too and its brand new but im pretty sure its just the noise of it doing its average job, it doesnt sound like its a problematic sound. Ive heard the design of the XPS along with where the HDD is on the laptop with the metal casing causes the clicking to be amplified a bit than normal, i have a Western Digital 320 5400RPM HDD but shouldnt be too much different i would assume, although yours is spinning faster.

 

Here's a solution posted by Prema:

 

Thx for reply. I have read the whole topic about reducing the noise. If it strats to be disturbing I'll use the advice...