G1S making frequent clicking sounds. Problems ahead?

My G1S is only a week old, and over particularly the last couple of days (but also to a lesser extent since last week) I've noticed that it's almost constantly making quiet clicking/ticking sounds (though occasionally stopping for a while when it's been sitting inactive for a while), which I'm assuming are coming from the harddrive.

Now every article I Google for proclaimed clicking sounds from a harddrive is a sure sign of Impending Doom(tm), but considering I've just had a $2000 one-year old desktop PC die on me (the reason I decided to try a laptop) and numerous other premature desktop hardware failures over the last 6-8 years, I'm really loth to have to return this laptop unless there really is something wrong with it aside from making a slightly annoying sound (which I imagine I'll learn to tune out).

Waiting for repairs and having to spend yet another 6+ hours getting everything updated, installed and up and running correctly isn't exactly my idea of a good time - particularly considering my previous unfortunate track record with hardware.

Anyone else having clicking harddrives in their Asus laptops (or any other one they may own or have owned for that matter)?
Is the thing about to roll over and die or just not behaving quite as well as you would hope for?

I'm gonna run a scan in half an hour, but I'm honestly not really expecting it to find any errors.

 

1. Make sure this is not the normal seek noise of the HDD. Some HDDs are noisier than others, e.g., Hitachis, whereas Seagates -- you can't hear them.

2. Use the HDD manufacturer's tool to verify the SMART status of the HDD.

 

It is a Hitachi and NB Probe is reporting the SMART status as "normal" (still got the scan to run, but I've got a few things to finish first).
Maybe it's nothing more than the seek sound of the HD? Albeit somewhat intrusive.

I just shut down the laptop entire and rebooted (usually I just use hybrid sleep) and there was zero ticking until I opened my email client.
Now it's at it again while I'm browsing, but I guess there's almost always a bit of disk activity in Vista, even if the system is just standing idle (I've got search indexing turned off by the way).

 

Okay, just found this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=92859

Sounds like it might just be this Hitachi drive that's a tad noisy - and apparantly it should be "fixable".

 

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Hitachi test tool. Forget NBProbe.

 

Thanks, I'll try it - but it's definately starting to look like this isn't an actual problem, but rather something that's apparantly rather common with some of the Hitachi drives (and apparantly, contrary to what I initially believed, though it does seem right now that I look at it - it's when the drive is mostly idle rather than when there's heavy activity).

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking

I think I might try the first tool on the page you linked to, which can apparantly "Change the drive automatic acoustic management settings.
- Lowest acoustic emanation setting (quiet seek mode) or maximum performance level (normal seek mode)."

Edit: I just started a defrag of the HD with Auslogic - it cut off the ticking sound immediately, so it does indeed appear to be happening when it's idling.

We've got a lot of G1S owners around here, don't we? Anyone else getting these quite audible ticking sounds with Hitachi drives?

 

While I sort of found my answer I'm nevertheless still interested in hearing if this ticking sound from the harddrive (apparantly caused when Hitachi drives park their read/write heads, which they seemingly do very aggressively) is common among G1S owners - or other laptops with Hitachi drives - or if I might have ended up with one where it's particularly bad.

So anyone else getting frequent audible (though not exactly loud) "tick, tick, tick" sounds from their laptops?

 

just wondering, do you have "index this drive for faster searching" on? for the first couple of days it should constantly use your hdd to arrange some files to make them faster for search when youre idling as far as i know.

 

Nope - I've got indexing turned off on the HDs (both the internal and my two external backup HDs), and the Windows Search service disabled as well.

But as I mentioned, according to all the info I've been able to find (quite a bit, though unfortunately no proper solutions) about this "tick, tick, tick" sound on Hitachi drives, it's actually worst - or most steady at least (though with irregular shorter or longer pauses, it's not quite like clockwork) - when the drive is idle, or being used for quick access - log writing or whatever - and then instantly parking the head again.
When there's heavy or moderately heavy activity it just sounds like you would expect a harddrive to sound.

I burned a bootable DVD with the Hitachi "Features" utility on it. Acoustic level was already set to low, and setting the Advanced Power Management feature to high performance (instead of the default middle setting), hoping it would cut down on the constant head parking didn't really do anything but increase the laptop fan noise (which I had just managed to get lowered to a nice quiet level the other day by dialing down max CPU use in the power management plan ) - so I switched it back to the default setting again.

Anyway, since there's virtually no doubt that this is not the sound of a dying harddrive (that's supposed to be a very different and quite a bit louder clicking or even clunking sound), but rather a protective "feature" that might be a tad overaggressive, I guess I'll just have to get used to it.
I think I'm already starting to as I don't really pay much attention to it anymore when I'm writing or reading or otherwise concentrated.

 

I've had clicking on mine. My laptop came with a 5400RPM Momentus Seagate HDD, but I replaced it with a 7200RPM Momentus Seagate (using the 5400RPM as my external).

It's been clicking now for around 4 months. And I've never had any failure, or freeze, or any sign that the HDD is failing or will fail. It could still be possible that it will die, but again I haven't seen any sign of it happening (When you work as I have as a technician, you see all kinds of HDD failure, so I would notice lol).

So unless your HDD is stalling, powering itself off and on, I wouldn't worry too much. Clicking can be caused by many different factors, not necessarily a sign that the drive is failing. If it bothers you too much though I'd get it replaced, I don't mind myself.

 

Very similar issue with my 5400.3 Seagate PATA 160GB. Clicking from the day I got it (half a year ago), no performance problems whatsoever.

If the SMART gives you a green light, I'd say don;t worry about it.