Clicking Noise issue *resolved*

I have changed 2 hard drives in my Asus G50V laptop from 5400.5 > 7200.4 (ST9500420ASG). Now i use 1TB in RAID0. I have posted new topic here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=391917

I searched Seagates web page for new firmware - no result. I contacted Seagate and they offered solution with SeaTools for DOS. I scanned ~2 hours every drive - no problem found. And in this test time hdd's didn't made clicking sound.

I tried to set up taohat solution from xenomorph[.]net - quietHDD windows service - no result. If i run quietHDD same commands as they are in windows service - i get unknown error. I think this is because of RAID0. I don't want to move to non-raid system.

Is these solution for my problem?

-) Maybe someone knows when Seagate can approximately create new firmware to Momentus 7200.4 series drives, is this 1 year, 2 years???
--) Maybe there is software that is capable to access hard drive all the time when laptop is on and operating system is loaded - so that heads of drives have no time and possibility to move heads from disk surface???

 

I cannot find HDParm for windows to download...the link doesn 't work anymore, does anyone know where i can find it? please link me

 

I searched for HdParm Win
http://hdparm-win32.dyndns.org/hdparm/
This works, i uset it and with good results:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5016216#post5016216

 

I know this thread is kind of old, but the above worked! I applied the firmware update my 320GB Seagate ST9320421ASG using the DE17 revision from dell & haven't had any problems now. I've been using QuietHDD for about a year w/ Vista & just running it automatically under task scheduler. That worked most of the time but would sometimes not startup again when coming out of sleep mode. Oddly enough, I never had the clicking on Ubuntu, which I assume runs hdparm or something in the background. Thanks for the link.

 

too bad it's not for 500 gb..

 

hey, nice find. I just downloaded this onto my 4300 w/ the seagate 160 free fall 7200 any my HD is def much quieter. very cool.

 

Hi, can somebody describe me the clicking sounds they were hearing? I have also an issue with my 7200.4 320gb Seagate drive.
Every time after the led blinks because of some hdd-activity, i hear this clicking sound like the head moves back into zero position. My system doesn't freeze or something, its just every couple of seconds (win7 64bit background processes or something) this click.
Btw, the sound is very low, but still (unfortunatly) it bothers me... Or is this sound maybe normal?

I checked for firmware updates, changed AAM/APM settings (with QuietHDD), but that didn't work.

 

Epic! Will try this out once I get 7 up on my machine (Currently using HDParm on Vista - big pain having to run a batch file I have sitting in my quick launch bar every time I resume from sleep!)

 

I had a clicking seagate hard drive and all i did was chatting online with dell and they sent me a western digital drive. No clicking sound after the hard drive swap.

 

Wish I still had the Dell that had this. My GF insisted on leaving it on at night and it literally kept me up. Not that loud, just got under my skin! Where was this 5 months ago!

Instant bookmark

 

Just wanted to update info onto this thread.

I have 2 WD Scorpio Black WD3200BJKT which both I installed in my Studio 17. The first one doesn't have the clicking noise at all. The newer one which I installed in the 2nd hard drive bay makes this clicking noise constantly. Both have the same firmware version.

I've found using software to set the APM to performance (FEh) could solve the problem but it's not convenient since it needs to be reapplied every time the laptop wakes up from sleep, so I end up accepting the noise... Until just recently I decided to move the clicking WD3200BJKT to my Fujitsu laptop (as the one and only installed HDD) and guess what...? The clicking noise disappears.

 

I installed parm, ran it in cmd prmpt, and put in "hdparm.exe -B 254 hda" and it didnt work. i still hear that insuffurable clicking!! my os is Vista x64 SP2. is it working with SP1 only??
please help i've tried everything

 

oh and it also tells me that it has changed it to 254 performance blah blah and yet i can still hear the noise when i out my ear up to my laptops key board

 

Quiet HDD

http://sites.google.com/site/quiethdd/

 

I would just like to post another interesting find. By using NHC and the directions on the first page, my hard drive now seeks quieter too. Very helpful thread.

...though my hdd went from 37 celsius to 41 celsius, so maybe I'll deal with the noise.

 

Finaly, i think, the best and permanent solution for Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2,5'' is to disable the idle timer of the disc. On Western Digital drives you can use this tool http://files.hddguru.com/download/Software/Western Digital/wdidle3_1_05.zip, made by WD. Offcourse, boot to ms-dos.

The idle timer on my WD1200BEVE was factory set to 8s. What a nightmare!
Firstly i've set the timer to 60s, but there was a problem. The hard drive would block after 60s under DOS or even earlyer when loading windows, so i disable the idle timer and that was it. Since then the HDD is working quietly, i don't expirience spin-down's and it is finally faster than my older 40GB Fujitsu.

I got my WD1200BEVE 5 days ago and since i've put it in my T42 i haven't sleeped a night, mostly searching the web for a solution. For the most of you that are satisfied with the 254 seting of APM, you can use this tool too HDDGURU Downloads > Software > HDDScan > HDDScan_v31.zip. It does not need installation (just run it under windows) and can set AAM and the idle timer with a permanent value, but for APM you'll have to set the 254 on every power-up.

In fact on HDDGURU: Laptop and Desktop Hard Disk Drives, Tests, Software, Firmware, Tools, Data Recovery, HDD Repair there are a lot of generic HDD tools and even more for every major hard disc maker. Tools from Westerd Digital that you cannot find on their site, for instance.

I am very dissatisfied with Western Digital. They have erased all the articles on this matter from their knowledge base. There is no firmware update for this entire series of Scorpio Blue, nor any kind of tool to save the curent firmware in a file form and to replace it with another one that suits you. That is something that every serious matherboard manufacturer ofers, for a comparison.
They are many, many threads on the web about clicking noise or sound from the hard disc of any brand. Infact, if you make a search on the "clicking noise" or "clicking sound" with the capacity criteria, you will find that the number of complains is riseing with the quantity of gigabytes.
WD and other producers of HDD see that the slogan "preserves battry life" sels well and don't care about anything else.

thank you, i hope that this solution, to disable the IDLE timer of the HDD will work equaly good for everyone else as it did for me.

 

I have a Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT in a Dell D820.
I've had it for about 4 months, and it has been perfect.

Today, it started making clicking noises every second or so. Rebooting didn't stop it. I ran the WD diagnostics and looked at the SMART data in the Nirsoft DiskSmartView program, thinking failure was imminent. The diagnostics reported no problems, and the SMART data looked normal. However, I observed that the Load Cycle Count was incrementing every second or so, in sync with the noises.

Searching a bit brought me to this thread. I ran HDPARM with the command "hdparm.exe" -B 254 hda", and the noises stopped.

My question is why would the drive work silently and normally for 4 months, then suddenly start exhibiting this Idle Timer problem?

 

thanks. worked for me.

 

this wouldnt work on windows 7 (64 bit), would it?

 

For all those with new Hp laptops, note that these computers bring an aplicattion called HP 3D Driveguard wich parks the hard drive head for safety very often (about every 5 seconds of inactivity in some hard drives) making the clicking sound. If the laptops falls to the floor or something, it is less probably the drive suffers damage this way.

Anyway, if you do not move the laptop when using it, this application is useless and very annoying, as you, clicking hard drive owner, can know.

Turn off this. And the clicking sound will be way more moderate, about once every 1 or 2 minutes of inactivity or so.

It worked for me... that Hp driveguard thing annoyed me to hell.

 

Sorry... but it still makes the DAMN Western Digital clicking sound.

I am tired of looking a solution, when should Western digital give us one, and stop the clicking hard drive sound.

Do not buy Western Digital hard drives. NEVER.

 

Hello,

I thought I'd post an update on this. I just bought a new Asus laptop, and everything seemed to be working perfectly - except for an awful ticking noise. I ran all the diagnostics I could find, and no problems were detected with my hard drive. I finally, based on your suggestions, tried hdparm and Scorpion's acoustic file, and the ticking has stopped Lets hope it stays that way

My hard drive is from Western Digital, and my OS is Windows 7 64 bit.

 

Question for those of you who have fixed the clicking noise with the help of Quiet HDD or other similar programs:

How long has it been since you used the fix? Do you see any hard drive issues? I'm especially interested in the long-term consequences of the programs that stop clicking.
I have an option of returning the "clicking laptop" to the store or use Quiet HDD. No guarantee though that another laptop will not have the same issue. Any advice is appreciated.

 

I own Inspiron 1520. Before 2 years i solved problem with WD Scorpio Blue 5000BEVT with Crystaldiskinfo, later with hdparm.bat file.
But now have new problem. Bought Samsung 1TB 2.5' laptop drive and can't stop the clicking noise. Crystaldiskinfo, Quiethdd, Hdparm at -254 or -255 don't work. Turn off AAM, APM with no helps.
Looks the problem called "Program fail count" (B5) and rapidly erasing. After 2 days have 380 000.

 

i use rusian software called PC2000

it's solved mine..

 

Hi Cyanize,
I own a Dell inspiron N5050 laptop.
It's hardrive failed within two months.
The drive was replaced,however i found that replaced drive made some significant crunching or grinding noise,so i called the Dell representative and hardrive has been replaced 4 times since then because of the noise that i hear.
two times it was Toshiba and two times it was Seagate,but both made similar noise(crunching or grinding).
Now finally i have Toshibha HDD now but still the same problem.
I had ran every possible tests to check the hardrive,the hard drive passess all tests.
Wiil the solution given by you in the very first post solve the issue or is there some problem in my laptop.
Specs
----------
Inspiron n5050
Intel core i3-2330M CPU-2.2GHZ
OS=Windows 7 64bit
HDD=Toshiba 500GB ,model=MK5076GSX ATA device

Please help me on this.

 

Hi Cyanize,
I own a Dell inspiron N5050 laptop.
It's hardrive failed within two months.
The drive was replaced,however i found that replaced drive made some significant crunching or grinding noise,so i called the Dell representative and hardrive has been replaced 4 times since then because of the noise that i hear.
two times it was Toshiba and two times it was Seagate,but both made similar noise(crunching or grinding).
Now finally i have Toshibha HDD now but still the same problem.
I had ran every possible tests to check the hardrive,the hard drive passess all tests.
Wiil the solution given by you in the very first post solve the issue or is there some problem in my laptop.
Specs
----------
Inspiron n5050
Intel core i3-2330M CPU-2.2GHZ
OS=Windows 7 64bit
HDD=Toshiba 500GB ,model=MK5076GSX ATA device

Please help me on this.