Loud Clicking Noise

hi,

i got my UL50Vt-X1 today and as i was doing OS recovery, the hard drive made a loud clicking noise for about 10 seconds. after that, it stopped and hasn't done it again since. should i be worried? someone told me it means the HD is dying but it only happened one time.

 

It could be a bad sign but it depends on the sound. If it's a light click, that is probably normal. If it's a very loud click, or worse, sustained loud clicking, it could be bad. If it happens again try and see if there is a lot of disk activity going on by looking at the HDD status LED. It could just be doing a lot of work.

On the other hand.. If it sounds similar to the drive in this video (in duration and intensity), you should back up your data ASAP (probably should anyways to be safe) and check your drive's warranty status. Keep in mind this is a 3.5" desktop drive (with the cover off) so it will not be as loud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbq8vfs1wYY#t=4m30s

 

I had the same clicking issue and then the hard drive died. Seems there is an issue with these seagate 500 gb drives they are putting in their laptops. i have an employee who bought the 17" asus laptop and his 500gb drive did the same thing.

I just swapped mine out for a 320gb drive i had lying around. Realistically i should have sent it back to Asus for repair, but i love my laptop so much i did not want to be without it for any period of time.

 

I just bought a Seagate 500GB drive the other day (to put in my old notebook) and experienced the same clicking with my drive. I'm going to return it but seems like it must be a bit of an issue with Seagate's latest drives.

 

DL QuietHDD and set the power saving to 255. You should only need to do this once. I have a 500GB 7200.4 and had the same issue, this cured it.......

 

thanks to everyone who replied!

@Allurgroceries
it is that same sound! how disturbing... i will try TANWare's suggestion before i do RMA. my HD is a seagate ST9320 as well.

@TANWare
i'm not sure how to use this program. should i set it to 255 on both battery and AC? then, it is okay to close the program through my tray? how about AAM settings? i have both AC and battery set to 254. it claims it is the fastest value. 128 is quietest but i'm not sure what AAM even means. thanks for your suggestion.

edit: here is my INI settings.
FirstRun = 0
AC_APM_Value = 255
DC_APM_Value = 255
AC_AAM_Value = 254
DC_AAM_Value = 254
AAMEnabled = 1
APMEnabled = 1

 

255 disables power saving entirely, should stop the drive from parking its heads, reducing the load cycle count.

 

Thanks for the tip TANWare, unfortunately in my case I think I just have a bad drive. I tried QuietHDD but it didn't seem to make much difference. Every now and then the hdd is clicking loudly. Lately when booting Windows it clicks and takes a long while to boot, so I think it's about to die soon.