Hard drive whirs and then clicks

[LokutusofBorg]

I've had a pair of 7200.12 500GB drives for almost a year now, and they've been great, no problems whatsoever. Recently bought a 7200.12 1TB and gave one of the 500s to my wife.

Unfortunately, the new drive is making sounds that have me a bit worried. At fairly often intervals I'll hear a whirring sound and then a single click like a mechanism engaging. Hard to explain. I've heard the typical click-of-death plenty of times, and that's not what this is. The typical click-of-death is multiple clicks in a row. This is just a single click. Whether this is a new click-of-death is what I am trying to determine.

I've run the Seagate SeaTools diagnostics and my drive passes every test that program has. I haven't seen any performance problems or anything noticeable. I recently built a computer for my cousin and put a 7200.12 1TB in his computer, and he confirms he is hearing the same sort of sound from his computer.

Does anyone know if this drive has a low level power-save mode that causes the drive to spin down/slower and then when you do anything that hits the drive it will spin it back up? If so, does anyone know how to disable that power save?

Thanks.

 

[Elixer]

You disable power savings in either the BIOS options, or your OS.

It could be parking the heads. Don't have a .12, so I couldn't tell you.

 

[wiretap]

Go into the control panel under power management and disable anything where it says turn the hard drive off after 'xx' number of minutes.

But, I've had drives make that noise before the controller dies, so I'd be careful and backup your data. I've had it where the controller loses power for a sec, then the drive re-initializes and clicks just like you're describing. Not a good sign if that's what it is. It could just be your control panel settings though. Don't get too worried yet.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Ah yes, thanks guys. Didn't notice that Win7's "High Performance" power profile was still set to turn the hard disks off after 20 minutes. I'm assuming it was being "smart" and watching only the hard drives for activity, cause I would hear this sound while actively using my computer (but not doing anything that would hit the hard drives).

I've set this to 120 minutes and will see if I continue to hear the sounds.

 

[wiretap]

Set it to zero so it never turns off. It's bad for hard drives to keep power cycling.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I've had a pair of 7200.12 500GB drives for almost a year now, and they've been great, no problems whatsoever. Recently bought a 7200.12 1TB and gave one of the 500s to my wife.

Unfortunately, the new drive is making sounds that have me a bit worried. At fairly often intervals I'll hear a whirring sound and then a single click like a mechanism engaging. Hard to explain. I've heard the typical click-of-death plenty of times, and that's not what this is. The typical click-of-death is multiple clicks in a row. This is just a single click. Whether this is a new click-of-death is what I am trying to determine.

I've run the Seagate SeaTools diagnostics and my drive passes every test that program has. I haven't seen any performance problems or anything noticeable. I recently built a computer for my cousin and put a 7200.12 1TB in his computer, and he confirms he is hearing the same sort of sound from his computer.

Does anyone know if this drive has a low level power-save mode that causes the drive to spin down/slower and then when you do anything that hits the drive it will spin it back up? If so, does anyone know how to disable that power save?

Thanks.

Sounds a lot like what many folks went through with Seagate's 7200.11 1TB drives a year ago. I, myself, went through three replacements (1 NewEgg, 2 Seagate) due to bad drive firmware. The replacement drives are working fine, but the bad firmware drives will just haunt you until you replace them.

 

[Voo]

Sounds a lot like what many folks went through with Seagate's 7200.11 1TB drives a year ago. I, myself, went through three replacements (1 NewEgg, 2 Seagate) due to bad drive firmware. The replacement drives are working fine, but the bad firmware drives will just haunt you until you replace them.

It's surely the "turn off after 20 minutes" problem.. I had exactly the same problem - never happened again after I disabled it..

 

[Painman]

I'm going with the Power Saving "feature" as well. Turn it off, save some spindle/stepper motors from untimely death.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Yep, I set the power settings to never turn off my hard drives, and I haven't heard the sound since.

I can't believe it was such an easy setting, I feel dumb. Thanks guys.

 

[Orubasarot]

...

 

[wiretap]

But is spinning for eternity really more reliable than turning off and on? I couldn't care less about the power saving aspect.

Yes.

 

[Rifter]

But is spinning for eternity really more reliable than turning off and on? I couldn't care less about the power saving aspect.

yes x2