Harddrive Noise Question

[jolancer]

Have only heard it do this a couple times or so having only been used for maybe a few weeks now. And what it did was Make a Louder then normal Click(only once) and then maybe a slight spin up noise right after but my memory isnt sure on that last part.(hasn't done it often)

Its usually very quiet and only makes some very quiet clicking sometimes which is normal, but once in a long while it did that out of no where.. The times it did that were very spread apart(different days) and not consistent with anything i was doing at the different times. Sorry the times it did it were so spread apart i can barely remember but i know it did it when i was running the winXP partition, but i think it did it once when i was running one of the Linux partitions i put on aswell.

I do have basic knowledge of some of this stuff, but this just sounds odd to me. From the start I Disabled all power saving in Windows like the HDD Sleep option, but hell if i know if the netbook bios or something does it automatically. It has not been running constantly for weeks, i turn it off myself. Anyone who may have insight or experience/best guesstimate on any likely danger of this symptom if normal or not is greatly appreciated. Thx

Sys Info:
Acer Aspire One D255 (NETBOOK)
TOSHIBA MK1665GSX 160GB
not new but only recently taken out of new box and used. I formated it but did not physicaly tamper with any of its hardware.

I totally repartitioned the Drive, it know has 8 partitions, 9 if you count the extended as 1.
the winXP partition is ~25gb.

 

[corkyg]

Be ready to replace the drive. Clicks are the sound of probable drive failure. Take precautions.

 

[jolancer]

Thx for the suggestion.

I would be curious though if anyone may have any more indepth details on a similar situation? sorry my advanced HDD knowledge is not that indepth. for example, does it sound like maybe its just hitting a bad sector or something? that could be fixed just by scanning the disk with a diag tool?

Also update: it happened again, I was simply typing a word into Firefox's search bar. It sounded exactly like when someone inserts a floppy into a realy stiff drive. and there was NO spinning noise. Just a single click.

I have since ran chkdsk /f on my ntfs partitions, but im also fairly knew to linux and since its a netbook and has no external drives I'm going to do a little research on the best apps to check my linux partitions if not the entire disk as one. Unless i find an usb bootable diag tool.

 

[dac7nco]

Also update: it happened again, I was simply typing a word into Firefox's search bar. It sounded exactly like when someone inserts a floppy into a realy stiff drive. and there was NO spinning noise. Just a single click.

Back up that drive right the hell NOW.

Daimon

 

[stargazr]

No corkyg pretty much nailed it. Back it up. Yesterday. And be prepared for it to fail. There's no software to prevent this.

wow 8 partitions on a 160GB drive

 

[jolancer]

apreciate the feedback. i double checked sum stuff and am going to run a few tests later. But i just noticed.. SATA mode has been running in IDE simulation mode either by defualt or i forgot i had to switch it to reformat XP. Either way i just changed it to AHCI and am going to see if i hear it again.. Also weird side note, i know it might be impossible to be related, but seems to me that it detects more available wifi networks quicker after i put SATA to AHCI mode.

another sidenote @stargazr - thats actually the Least amount of partitions that i could use with what i wanted to accomplish... 1)original OEM restore partition 2)xp 3)grub legacy boot 4)ntfs backup/storage 5)ext3 linux backup/storage 6)ext4 ubuntu 7)linux swap 8)extra possible diff linux distro