Hard drive clicking-Driving me batty.

My HP Pavilion DV9740 notebook's hard drive has recently begun clicking. It sounds exactly like the armature parking itself. It is two clicks (slightly different sounding) back to back, and the pair occurs sometimes once or twice a minute. The hard drive did not do this for the first 11 months. Other than the relentless clicking, the computer appears to be working fine.

What is this? Is there a setting that might have been changed that is causing the heads to park frequently?

 

If your computer is still under warranty, I would get HP to replace the hard drive. Clicking hard drives means it will almost certainly die soon. I would back up my important data on another hard drive/flash drive.

 

Is the sound more a scratching sound or like pressing a small button clicking?

You can run a hard disk test through the BIOS.

Have you dropped your notebook recently? It's kind of weird for both to be possibly failing at the same time.

Definitely call up HP for help!

 

mine is very clicky and so was the one on both dv5t's i had... as far as i can tell, it's a normal trait..

 

There is no scratching. It is two successive metalic clicks. I am extremely careful with the notebook. It has not suffered any kind of impact or jarring.

Can you indicate how to acces and run this test?

 

I had the same problem with my ST980815A disk when I bought it.

Download hdparm from http://hdparm-win32.dyndns.org/hdparm/ (the win32 port of a standard linux program). Type: hdparm -B 254 sda. Wait and see if clicks again. If it doesn't, add it to your startup. Explanation: this command temporarily alters the power management level of the drive, which should prevent any parking. The level is reset by your BIOS when you reboot, and on some laptops when it comes out of S1. The least power-saving level is 254; do not use 255, that's a "custom" level that varies from drive to drive.

 

Aha! I hope I was trying to keep the post as simple as possible by not mentioning the computer had recently been in for service (hinge and noise in the headphone jacks) and had only really started after coming back. They had wiped the hard drive, and obviously changed the bios.

What you just described, do you think I can handle it? I am really a novice at computers.

 

i had a laptop external drive that did this. it clicked like crazy and sometimes the computer wouldnt see it right away causing lag. eventually it died after about 6 months worth of clicking taking everything on the drive with it.

if it was me i would buy acronis true image software. make an image of the failing drive to an external drive like a western digital passport or similar. go to best buy or something and buy the 320 gig 7200 laptop drive for 99 bucks or whatever. install it in the laptop. boot from the acronis disk then choose restore choosing the image from the western digital passport drive. problem solved. throw clickity drive in trash.

 

Why does everyone think it's the drive failing? Mine has been doing the same thing for a couple years and I too am wondering what is causing it. I bought another drive made by a different manufacturer and placed the OLD drive in the secondary slot and put the NEW drive in the primary slot and did a factory restore. After a couple months the new drive started making the same clicks. I can tell its the primary drive with windows installed on it because of the location the sound is coming from. I still use the old drive for recording tv in media center and have no problems with it.

Please someone that is smart tell all of us what software is causing all the clicking of the drive so we can stop the annoyance.

If you do a reboot, it stops for a day or 2. If you do a factory restore it stops for a month or 2.

 

I think your hard drive is just fine.
If Windows freezes as the hard drive produces the clicking noise, then it is possible your hard drive is about to die. If not, it is more likely that your hard drive is just fine.

 

I am not knowledgeable about computers, but I am very good with mechanical things. My intuition is that the armature is parking itself due to some kind of command (or lack of one) as indicated by the poster VGA256.

The problem is, it is intolerable. As I noted in my title, it is driving me mad, like Chinese water torture, and it has to be solved. My guess is some hard drives have a naturally louder click, and those with such hard drives are more affected.

I wanted to try the fix offered by VGA256, but I am scared to without a bit more information. I am going to call HP today to see if they have any thoughts. I will report back afterwards.

 

My hard drive drives me crazy, but I'm now used to it.
HP technicians do not have "thoughts". They are helpless in most cases (at least for me).

If you call them, they will (1) say that it is normal and okay, or (2) ask you to test the hard drive, or (3) ask you to send the hard drive.

Maybe, if (3) happens, it might solve the problem because a different hard drive is less likely to have the same problem. But, you will not be satisfied at least at first.

 

Toshiba MK1646GSX here, 160 gig drive. Clicks often, Hovers on 65 degrees under basic load, and enjoys long walks on the beach.

 

Letting the drive park and unpark itself that often may significantly reduce its lifespan. A typical drive is good for about 500,000 load/unload cycles. This isn't just theory, google "Load_Cycle_Count problem", e.g. see http://www.linux-archive.org/fedora-development/220432-confirmed-premature-hard-disk-failure.html

I'm attaching a screenshot for hdparm for windows to give you a better idea what you need to do. (url given in my previous post)

 

Thanks for the screen shot. That helps me greatly in the intuitive sense.

I called HP. Of course they ran every test in the book (to the tune of a two hour call, in which I heard the noise under every possible condition) including a full disk check to close, and found nothing wrong. I told them about the hard drive parking as part of a power management setting (as per your posts) but they knew of nothing in this regard. They then suggested that I excecute a full hard drive reformat. I declined knowing the agony involved in reinstalling a years worth of programs, and that it would not resolve the issue anyway. They then suggested to have the computer sent in for service (of course so they could reformat the hard drive regardless ), but I declined, at least for the time being.

I am going to call Western Digital, and see if I can get a tech there to walk me through your setting changes, since this would seem to be their area of expertise. VGA, my inuition is that you are spot on about the cause and solution, however, I am still a bit scared of attempting this change on my own. I really appreciate your keen insight, and will continue to try to rectify the issue along your suggestions. I will report back again.

 

Not sure if this will help anyone but I know 2 people whose HPs recently started clicking and windows was freezing. They also thought it was the hard drive and took it to be repaired. Turns out it was a stuck key (that didn't look stuck!) One should be able to tell if a key is stuck, but I guess not always so!

 

LOL..................