Clicking Noise issue *resolved*

Update2: For all the Vista users (mostly x64), please follow the suggestions by deadsimple and use hdparm if you don't want to deal with the constant "screen brightness" issues that NHC has with vista.

Update: This solution has been proven to work with Western Digital and Toshiba Hard Drives in addition to Seagate. Several users reported success while applying the following steps. I can only recommend this to everyone who wants to max out the performance of their HDD and get rid of the annoying clicking sound.

Well finally after waiting 6 weeks, I got my inspiron 1520 on Monday.
I have an AUO screen (fortunately not the grainy one, unfortunately with some bad leakage on top/bottom, but tolerable), and my headphone jack is working correctly. The CPU Whine is sorta gone after installing XP.

But just as I thought I got lucky, I heard it....a permanent clicking noise coming from the hard drive accompanied by the LED light of the HDD.

But before I present you with the solution, my specs:

# Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.0 GHz/4MB L2 Cache)
# OS: Microsoft XP Professional
# Hard Drive: Seagate 160 GB SATA @ 5400RPM
# Screen: 15.4" WXGA+ Widescreen (1440 x 900) AUO 2077
# Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256MB
# RAM: 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM @667 MHz (2 x 1GB)
# Optical Drive: 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/Double Layer Support
# Battery: 6-cell lithium ion
# Wireless: Intel 3945 ABG

Purchase price: $ 1,013

So, after spending countless hours researching the internet for a solution to the clicking sound of the HDD while being idle, I nearly gave up.

Then I recalled a handy little tool I used a while back with my old acer laptop.

Notebook Hardware Control.

Since I identified the clicking noise as "HDD head parking", I knew the drive wasn't failing (and ofc I ran every possible HDD health check utility) so the only thing I needed now was a utility to change the acoustic management setting of the drive. And you guessed it, Seagate didn't offer anything like that. Thank you Seagate.

But lets get to the solution:
1. Download the NHC 2.0 Pre-Release 06 ( Dell version)
2. Download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (if you don't have it installed)
3. Install NHC
4. Run NHC
5. Go to the newly appeared icon in your system tray and doubleclick (it's the one with the CPU frequency...so don't confuse it with the RMclock one)
6. In the window that just appeared select the Settings tab
7. Click Show all NHC options and settings
8. Now select the Hard Disk tab, and under Advanced Power Management select the highest setting: Max. Peformance Mode

Voila, the constant clicking sound is gone for good. Have fun.

PS: Ofc you can play around with the settings. Hope this solves the issue for many inspiron users out there.

 

You don't need to install that program. You can adjust that setting in the BIOS.

Its a great program though.

 

Holy crap, it worked. You are a legend! This problem has been irritating me for weeks on my Vostro. Who would have thought that "Loud" mode makes the laptop quieter!

Does anyone have any thoughts as to the impact on battery drain? Is the hard-drive a very significant source of power consumption?

 

It is still hardware related. I am using performance mode and I do not hear a click at all. Mine has a Toshiba SATA-300 5400RPM 120GB.

 

Well, obviously. We are talking about a hard-drive here

My clicky hdd is a 160GB Seagate 5400RPM, just like the creator of this thread.
Not a tick-of-death mind you, just a very irritating one.

 

Nice one finding this out, how do you do it in the bios?

I feel a little cheeky now, dell upgraded my 160gb to 250gb coz of this and new HDD is fine hehe. Glad u didnt post this 3 days ago ^_^

 

The bios setting doesn't fix the clicking for me.
Only works with the NHC program in Windows, and "hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda" under Linux.

If you want to try it anyway: on my 1400, it's a case of hitting F2 during boot. Then just navigate like so:



Sorry for the blurriness, crappy phone camera.

 

Where in the bios?

 

Like I said one post before yours, it doesn't work (for me, read next page for it working for someone else)!

The bios setting only changes the "Acoustic Mode", which didn't really do anything in terms of reducing sound.

You have to go and set the "Power Management" to Max Performance (254) in NHC (or using hdparm in Linux).

The hard-drive will instantly make less noise! You can infact keep the Acoustic Mode on Quiet if you like, as long as Power Management is on Performance. Personally I didn't hear any difference between Quiet and Loud.

 

An SSD hard drive should make things quieter. hehe

 

So will this "fix" drain more battery or will it be the same?

 

Thank you for the information, Cyanize. I have a Dell Vostro 1500 with a Seagate Momentus HDD 160 GB 5400. I also have the same clicking sound problem. I installed NHC and changed the settings as you suggested, and it solved the problem. BTW, I found that running HD Tune also stopped the clicking, I think this is beause it accesses the HDD every 5 seconds or so, and the head parking only occurs after 20 or 30 seconds of HDD inactivity.

Out of curiousity, I also tried to change my BIOS HDD Acounstic Mode from 'Bypass' to 'Performance' (after turning off NHC), and this also worked. As the BIOS message advises, the hard drive is slightly noiser, but this is far better than the 'clicking' sound that I had to put up with before.

 

I can't even get NHC to run. I get this error message:

 

Running the special Dell version?

http://www.p35-forum.de/files/nhc_2.0_pre_release_06_dell.zip

That's really strange. I guess if it worked for you, then we might be referring to different clicking sounds or the hard-drives might be a bit different?

What's the hdd model number of yours?

 

I have a Seagate Momentus ST9160821AS, SATA 160 GB 5400

 

Same.

I guess if it works, then it works *shrug*

 

Looks like I missed something.

 

Glad to see that my suggestion helped.

 

Ummm pretty freaky - as soon as I changed it to high performance, the hard drive instantly stopped the constant chugging. Awesome tip!

Is there any downside to longevity of the disk, heat, battery implications, etc?

 

I'm not sure if I'm having the same problem as you guys. I hear an occasional chirp noise. I figure its coming from the HDD, but its not a constant sound, and it is not very loud. Still can get annoying though.

 

Just gotta add I'm pretty impressed. Firefox/IE/Word/Excel all load up much more quickly than before. Similar to how my deskto with 7200rpm drives respond.

 

I've been running my HDD in this mode for quite some time now. After changing the settings in NHC I did a couple of drive health checks, all of these turned out fine. I used the laptop extensively and did a couple of battery longevity tests.

The battery time did drop around 25 minutes to my previous tests, so it's nothing substantial. As for the HDD longevity (life), I checked back with Seagate and their official answer was, that it didn't affect the hdd lifespan.
After doing some research on this subject I came to the conclusion that frequent spin-ups and spin-downs do reduce HDD life (so power saving modes only conserve battery life), but manufactures already account for these within a "regular" lifespan of a modern mobile HDD (which is around 4.5-5 years).

And as most people exchange their laptops more frequently, I don't really worry about this issue that much.

As for heat, I did a couple of measurements with my digital thermometer, I couldn't detect any difference when compared to normal operation.

Hope this answers your questions.

PS: And yes it did affect my numbers in HD Tune benchmarks (except maybe access time).

 

there were heat numbers a while back for this and it was only a degree or 2 at most difference.

 

someone please sticky this!

 

I've been using this fix since Cyanize posted it a week ago. Laptop has almost completely stopped making noise. Both the loud hard-disk activity noise as well as that power-saving "tink" have gone.

In terms of temperature I can't really comment as my laptop barely produces much noticeable heat, even when I'm running CAD simulations for hours ...

 

bump, and sticky vote!

 

So I did this and the click is gone, but sometimes, I get like random HDD spinning or accessing. I never got this before. It goes away when I hit "analyze" in Windows Defrag. Not sure why this is, but my external used to get super loud and I somehow discovered hitting analyze fixed the problem. Any idea what's up now?

 

Are you running Vista?

If so, then there's a couple of things you can do, like disabling the indexing service and a few more things found here.

If you're running XP, then maybe try looking at the task manager (ctrl+alt+del), which processes are using resources when the HDD spins up. (I personally only get this because I use diskeeper (auto defrag. when laptop is idle)).

There can be a number of reasons for HDD activity ( a huge load of them in Vista), and a few in XP. When you hit analyze in any HDD defragmenting software, the OS temporarily locks down the partition so it can read the location of your files, and therefore stops all HD activity for a second. (at least in XP and above)

 

I am running XP. I don't think there are any programs that are using or requiring HD activity though. I do have indexing disabled. I feel like this problem started since I got the NHC program and changed the HD settings.

 

Then just reset NHC from 254 (max performance) to the default 128 (without spin down) and see if it's caused by the app.

As is wrote before, there can be a lot of reasons for HDD activity, without checking your processes when the HDD activity occurs, there's no telling what might be causing your problems.

 

Wow....I have the same clicking issue on my M1330....will surely try this.....

Does this NHC tool work on vista.....? Any side effects while using it on Vista.......?

 

It worked buddy.....thanx !!

 

Glad to hear it helped.

Actually NHC enhances the performance of your HDD by setting the power saving features to a minimum. If anybody is interested, you can find some nice material on mobile hard drives here (warning: it's a bit old).

 

I find that entering Hibernation and then resuming can sometimes reset the NHC hard-drive setting, making the chirps occur again. Just have to change the HDD to "Spin-down mode" and then back to Max Performance again.

 

I had a random LOUD click from time to time when using my laptop. It sounded like the hard drive was locking into place (I believe the head was stopping as a power-saving measure, but it seemed near-useless as the head would start moving again very shortly). Using this program, I've gotten rid of the click.

Big thanks for the post!

 

I realize this may sound like an odd question, but how loud is loud & how often is from time to time?

I heard a very loud "tock" (more like a "tock" then a "click", anyways) twice during the course of the evening and I figured it had to be coming from the speakers 'cause it was too loud to be coming from the HDD, but now I'm wondering since you wrote "loud"... . Once I heard it I tried to "trace" the noice, but like I said, it only happened twice throughout the whole evening, so I had no chance to localize the sound...

HDD is relatively quiet during operation and aside form this loud "tock" I can't complain about any other noise eminating from my M1330.

 

great tip! cool!

 

Any x64 software solutions for this?

 

awesome tip. I can finally leave my notebook on and no more really load click. thanks

 

Can someone please describe the problem?

I do have some light tapping noise when my HDD running (blue light going crazy). Is this suppose to be when there is no HDD activity and is the noise similar to HDD running?

Does this also fix the tapping noise during HDD activity?

 

I get significantly loud regular hard-disk noise. On top of that I get a very distinct and annoying "tink" when the drive is idle for a bit. Both noises are reduced with this fix, to the point where I don't even hear/notice the drive anymore even during normal disk activity.

 

I don't remember noticing this type of noise and I have the Toshiba HDD. I do notice annoying activity noise like light high freq. tapping when ever the HDD light is on.
So I guess I do not have the same problem as some others are using this for a fix.

 

Good description, that was exactly what mine was doing

 

How loud...noticeable by other people near me in a classroom at my university. Not deafening, but noticeable. Hard to describe the sound, but it was definitely mechanical; I'm all but certain it was the hard drive head stopping.

How often...seemed to be random. I might have it once every 5 minutes during a 30-minute stretch, then not hear it for an hour. Probably tied to my use; it tended to stop more often when web surfing (low HDD activity).

I did have a similar click sound on my old Acer laptop. I never really pursued the problem as it was occurred at a much lower frequency than it did on my Vostro, but I'm sure that it was the disk stopping as well.

Note that general hard drive access is fine; obviously there is a reasonable amount of sound, but it's not more than any other drive/computer that I've used, desktop or laptop.

 

Have someone with the Western Digital Scorpio HDD (for example WD1200BEVS) tried this:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y2xpY2tpbmc*&p_li=&p_topview=1

?

 

Thanks for the reply & info

Sounds like what I noticed with my M1330 + Samsung Spinpoint. I can live with the noise so long as we are certain it's not a failing HDD... (we are certain, aren't we...? )

 

Hey,
thanks for taking the time to go through the battery of tests (pun intended) and posting your findings

If I can figure out how, I'll rep you big-time

 

Thanks for the solution!!!

I have two questions:

(1) I had the similar problem on Thinkpad T61 with 160G
5400RPM seagate HDD. Can I use the solution for a
Thinkpad?

(2) Do I need to keep NHC running for making the niose
dissapear? I wonder if NHC will set something for once and
then the OS can just read and use it.

 

Running NHC (and then closing it) once per boot will keep the setting active. The fix will be lost when you reset, or sometimes when you hibernate.

I investigated registry fixes, but gave up.