Ever since I built my computer my (new) hard drive has been clicking every so often. It’s a single, audible “click”. I put it in the bottom hard drive rack of the P180 case, so it’s standing upright – that shouldn’t be a problem for modern hard drives right? Should I be worried?
Standing upright shouldn’t matter, but if the drive’s clicking, you need to return it.
You can mount a drive upside down, and there’s no problems. If the drive is clicking, I wouldn’t hesitate to return it. I might pause for a second to install Speedfan and use its SMART diagnostics to see if there are any redflags, but then I’d still return it for a drive that wasn’t clicking.
Is it a Seagate? I’ve noticed something like that with my new Seagate drive when it seeks, though it’s only really blatant under heavy load or long periods of sequential access (e.g., which recording shows with MythTV, there’s a noticeable click every couple of seconds or so.
Hasn’t caused any problems so far, and is still a big improvement over the drive this was a replacement for, which squealed horribly and started failing SMART tests within two days of being installed…
Yeah! It’s a seagate, 320 gig. I had a dying, different-sort of clicking drive before, and this sounds different, which is why I didn’t return it immediately.
It’s over the time period for in-store returns now; I’ll have to send it for RMA…so it warms my lazy heart to hear that it might just be how seagates are built. I’ll definitely try speedfan to see if I hit anything tho. Thanks everyone.
My rule of thumb: if your hard drive’s a-clickin’, then the clock is a-tickin’. Replace it.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
IIRC you can run seagate tools for windows while web browsing or playing civ.
It’s gonna die. Probably seconds before you start backing up your data. :(
I have a 200 gig Maxtor that does this and has since I bought it…just randomly clicks for no apparent reason.
It’s been going for two years now though and hasn’t crashed yet.
You’re weird. Stay away from my computers. :-)