hdd clicking noise in vista.

Hi folks,

Every 10 secs there's a "click" sound which come from my HDD (like the old "click of death").
The funny thing is that before sending back my laptop to HP for an other issue, I solved this problem, but they formated the disk so now it's back.

I solved that problem by downloading a little file (I don't remember what was the extention of that file) which remove that pretty common clicking noise under vista.
Now the problem is that i can't find that file anymore no matter how hard I search. I think it was a link from a forum but I can't be certain.

I know it's a little strange, but does anyone know what could have been that file and where to find it?

Thanks!

 

Make sure you scan your hdd for errors and check smart in case its failing which in that case you should back up and replace it asap.

If the hdd seems fine then you can try pushing APM to the max which basically will stop the hdd from packing the head (which is what causes the clicking sound if im not mistaken, at least in my case it was.)

For that i used to use hdparm but i switched to Hddscan about half a year ago which seems to do exactly the same job.

Basically start the program choose your hdd (in case you have more than one), press the icon on the right, Features -> IDE Features and slide Advanced Power Management to 254.

Keep in mind that this setting needs to be reapplied each time windows starts (same as hdparm) but you can make a bat file to run on windows startup so you wont have to go over the same thing each time. Note that you dont need to keep the program running so after you are done you can close it.

Seems the newest version 3.3 has some issues with Windows 7 64bit (on my pc at least), so if you have trouble starting the program etc try 3.2 which is what ive been using for a while now.

 

Thank you so much!

Setting APM to 254 was exactly what was doing the little app I had.

I think there is a way with hdparm to fix APM to 254 forever tho.

 

Not in my case at least, the hdd settings seems to reset to default every time windows starts. I found a few programs that could change the settings (outside windows) to a more perm state but since a .bat file works just fine i never checked them out.