Laptop HDD sounds bad, tests good

[marlinman]

My laptop's 300GB WD HDD sounds very unwell. To my ear, the arm sounds like it's slamming into something at regular intervals - at times, more than once each second. I ran the WD "Data LifeGuard Diagnostics" module and all appears well. The laptop has suffered a number of falls over the seasons, which do nothing to improve HDD lifespan I'm sure. Other than storing any data I wish to keep elsewhere, is there anything I can do to improve the drive's health? If nothing else, the incessant clicking is very annoying!

 

[Ketchup]

IIRC Lifeguard tests the ability of the disk itself (platters) to accept reads and writes, not the "health" of the arm, and the motor driving it.

So, it could go tomorrow, or last 20 more years. I have been around old SCSI drives that are as loud as sin, but still perform fine, considering the age.

Having said that, the slamming sound concerns me, and leads more towards guessing it is on its way out.

edit: depending on our definition of slamming, it reminds me of what I would hear when an OS would crash and do a reboot, as the arm "slamming" to the waiting position.