Is my 8510p's hard drive dying?

Every once in a while it makes a "tick/clunk" type sound as if it's resetting the head. I ran HD Tune and everything seems fine. Should I be worried? BTW, my 8510p has a Toshiba hard drive.

 

Occasional clicks are fine. Its only the frequent ones that you need to worry about. Also a failing HDD usually will have other symptoms as well like bad sectors, slow access and in some cases overheating. Since you already ran the HD tune test and it didnt show up anything then your HDD shoyuld be doing fine. HP should also have a BIOS HDD test, you might want to run that as well just in case.

 

Does it still work? I remember when I heard the tick/clunk noise on my hard drive on my last laptop, I had to get a new one because they said that if they make this noise then the hard drive is dead.

 

The click/ticking noise is your HD's head parking. Poor HD power management can make it click excessively

On average, how many time does it do it per minute?

 

I'm not sure how often it does it maybe like once or twice per minute sometimes less. I read around on the Internet regarding my hard drive model and it seems people have experienced hard drive failure with this model even after few weeks of use. I just got my laptop a couple months ago too.

 

The most important thing you should do right now is backup the drive!
Unfortunately, Toshiba doesn't provide any low-level drive diagnostics utility, but you can try Seagate's Seatools and see if it will work on your drive.

 

Every drive model will have some sort of bad feedback of premature failure. Not all hd's were made perfect from the factory. Its inevitable, though some brands have a higher failure rate than the other

As chrixxx said, backup your stuff. You should be doing this anyway

There is a 600,000 cycle barrier on how many times the HD can park/unpark. Heres the chart, count how many times your HD clicks per minute x 60

 

Does this seem normal?

 

It not only seems normal, those numbers look pretty good. Honestly, as long as HDD diagnostics (HDTune, Speedfan, bios test) all report everything as OK, I wouldn't worry about it. Just backup your data regularly

For fun I just counted the clicks my Hitachi drive makes per minute...It did 3 in the first minute, then nothing for the next 4 or so...But since I backup everything weekly I don't really worry about it. Gogo 3 year warranty!

Anyway in my last laptop I had a Samsung drive which parked the heads (click click click!) probably once every 10 seconds. It was pretty crazy. I went through the replacement rat-race twice with Samsung, both times getting replacement drives which clicked as much as the first. I eventually gave up and went back to my best friends Seagate/WD, stuffing the Samsung in an external to be my second backup backup.

Hey! Once you have a complete HDD meltdown, you'll keep two full backups at all times too

 

I've also noticed the clicks/ticks only happen when the HDD is idling. Is this how it's suppose to be?

 

Yes it will click ocasionally while idle

 

Yes the heads will park when unused so the disk doesnt get damaged from vibration.

 

How come my old hard drive in my zx5280us, which was a 80GB 4200 rpm HDD, never did this?

 

This info is actually from the ubuntu forums but the problem also applies to windows. It happens to me when i use ubuntu

You can get rid of the clicks/noises by installing NHC (notebook hardware control) and changing the APM profile. It probably wont work for you since you have Vista Business 64

 

So, bascially, my HDD is fine and these "clicks" are not a sign of a failing HDD? I don't have to worry about anything?

 

Unless it happens all the time, you're fine Also, re: your old drive not clicking...it may not have had the advanced power management or whatever that these new drives have which cause them to park the heads and thus click.

OR conversely it did click but was too quiet for you to hear

 

I also recommend trying a manufacturer's diagnostic tools. Not sure which ones would work on your drive but try Seagate/Maxtor, WD and Hitachi ( http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm). I've had good luck with the Hitachi Drive test working with non-Hitachi drives, so i would try that first. If it passes the long/thorough test, you can be sure it is OK (at least for a while). Good Luck.