hard drive clicks on lenovo

i have a thinkpad edge 14.

After 2 weeks of use, I can hear the hard drive click from time to time. Should I send it back for another one?

Also, I gave the core i3 m370 processor a performance test, and the result was a 840.8 passmark, which is way off from the 2200 that's on the CPU lookup.

 

Call support, they'll probably send you a new drive. Are you running the CPU at full power?

 

It is perfectly normal for hard drives to make clicking noises, given that they are mechanical devices. In any case, testing the drive is still the best option before calling tech support for a new one.

Lenovo Support & downloads - Drivers and software - ThinkPad Edge 13 / E30, Edge 14 / E40, Edge 15 / E50

Download the Lenovo Hard Drive Quick Test diagnostic utility. Run it. Let us know the results.

 

it passed all it's tests. I guess it's alright...

what about the benchmark thing? I ran the performance test, and the passmark was way lower than I thought it would be.

 

Synthetic benchmarks are not nearly as important as real-world performance, but if you are experiencing performance issues, there are a large number of potential causes. The first steps are:
- ensuring that the CPU isn't throttled via Power Manager
- opening Task Manager and sorting processes by CPU consumption to find processes that are consuming an abnormally high amount of CPU time
- checking to make sure that the CPU isn't overheating while running at 100%. Use HWMonitor.

 

I'm noticing that my hard drive is clicking more frequently. I've looked online for the sound of a dying lenovo hard drive, and this one matches.

Functionally, everything appears to be fine. It passes all it's tests on "Lenovo Hard Drive Quick Test," but could it be that the hard drive is not in a good state, even though it's passing it's tests?

 

SMART attributes rely on specific sensors and readings, so in theory a drive could still fail despite passing these tests. However, this is unlikely. What you're probably hearing (if it's an intermittent *click*) is the sound of the hard drive parking the read-write heads from above the platter. This is simply a power-saving feature. If you modify your power plan in Windows 7, you can set the number of minutes before Windows parks the heads.

 

I have witnessed a drive passing SMART test and failing minutes later, in fact I have only seen SMART detect a failing drive in about 1% of the failed drives I have replaced.

Some clicks are okay, my old Sony made what sounded like *click click splash* sound repeatedly, it was normal. All 3 drives I put in did this and they did it a lot (even different brands). Like Bog said, if it's when the drive is powering down, it's not an issue, usually this is a single solid click, usually followed by the patters spinning down. On the other hand if it does it while accessing info, the drive is toast, or if it does it constantly. I have seen drives click once and that's it, they never run again.

Considering that it's getting worse, I would recommend making a backup... NOW. The next click could literally be the last.

 

Is there a place (website maybe) where I can actually hear the difference between normal clicks as oppose to abnormal clicks?

Again, my laptop remains silent most of the time. But sometimes, when it's just sitting there with nothing to do, there's consecutive clicking.

 

A click after a certain period of time of idle or no read/writes is just the drive parking the heads. Common sound, although some drives are louder than others. Anyway, here are some sounds of dead HDD's. Note that none of those on that site are functional with those sounds.

 

I had two Thinkpad T41s for a few years and both drives clicked a ton. After all these years, both T41s still work and both have their original drives. I wouldn't worry about your Edge if I were you. Just use your Thinkpad and enjoy!

 

If it starts clicking after when it didn't from the beginning, you should be concerned. I've used recent models Thinkpads (models from the last 2yrs) that came with Western Digital, Seagate, Fujitsu and Hitachi drives. All of them have been pretty quiet, definitely no clicking.

This is what the warranty is there for. Use it.

 

What drive is it?

My Seagate had a firmware update that fixed the chirping or clicking on my drive. It sounded like it was going bad, but it wasn't a firmware update fixed it.