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    Toshiba 160gb hd stoped makes "click" "click"

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by gertas, Jun 6, 2008.

  1. gertas

    gertas Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi,
    I had Toshiba hd on my dell xps m1530 and it was making "click, click" noise.. When i put this hd in exteral case it stoped making this strange sound. Now I have WD 320 Scorpio hd on my dell and it makes the same noise... I wonder if sth wrong is with my laps hd connectors. What do U thing?
     
  2. Celthric

    Celthric Newbie

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    well, i had a problem like that with an acer i had, but hd had crashed
     
  3. Bog

    Bog Losing it...

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    Laptop hard drives frequently park their R/W heads away from the platter to reduce power consumption and to protect data integrity in the event of a fall. I wouldn't worry too much about these noises, they are very normal.
     
  4. Lil Mayz

    Lil Mayz Notebook Deity

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    If they are loud and distinctive "click" noises, then something could be seriously wrong with the read/write head. I would immediately back up any data on the drive, and run a Windows drive check.

    Go into My Computer > right click on HDD (usually C ) > click properties from menu. > Tools Tab > click CHECK NOW.

    "Automatically fix file system errors" will correct any file system errors detected.

    "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" will perform a search for areas of the hard drive that may be damaged or unusable. If errors are found, it will mark those areas as "bad" and prevent your computer from using them in the future.

    After that, you may need to restart your PC.

    You can also check for errors using HD Tune.
    http://www.hdtune.com/
     
  5. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    Bog has it right. The noise is not a bad thing.
    The harddrive has spinning disks inside of it, and their are heads which read the data and write data to the drive. Their is a band on the center of the disk, which is where the harddrive heads can idle at while the drive is not being used. This noise is completely normal, and it is from the actuator arm moving the heads to the part of the disk where the heads are supposed to stay.
    If you would like, run hdtune as Lil mays said, and just check the health tab. If the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics report any red, then the drive as failed, and you should replace the drive.
    You can also go to Toshiba's website or Western digital's site and download harddrive programs, which will control the fly speed of the actuator arm, and thus reduce noise. However this results in a loss in performance.

    K-TRON
     
  6. eleron911

    eleron911 HighSpeedFreak

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    NHC has a spindown option also.