My clicking HD, troubleshooting.

[MarcVenice]

I got speedfan today, and noticed I could monitor my HD's with it as well. Now, the clicking HD I got, which I think is the WD 120gb one, and not the brand new 500gb samsung HD, got the following report, with notes.

Attribute Current Raw Overall
Raw Read Error Rate 200 0 Very good
Spin Up Time 99 3566 Watch
Warning: Spin Up Time is below the average limits (137-154).
Start/Stop Count 99 1437 Very good
Reallocated Sector Count 200 0 Very good
Seek Error Rate 100 0 Normal
Power On Hours Count 93 5437 Very good
Spin Retry Count 100 0 Very good
Calibration Retry Count 100 0 Very good
Power Cycle Count 100 857 Very good
Reallocated Event Count 200 0 Very good
Current Pending Sector 200 0 Very good
Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count 200 0 Very good
Ultra DMA CRC Error Rate 200 0 Very good
Write Error Rate 200 0 Very good

As you can see, everything seems to work fine, except for the spin up time.

NOTE : your hard disk Spin Up Time attribute current value (99) is below the normal range (137 - 154) reported for your specific hard disk model. Recently purchased hard disks that were not yet power cycled many times might experience a low value here and it wouldn't be a problem as, after some time, the value should raise towards better ones. If, on the other side, your hard disk is not that new and it was powered on several times this might mean its mechanic is getting old. According to Power Cycle Count attribute, your hard disk was powered on 857 times and this seems to indicate that your hard disk is not brand new and that some kind of drive's mechanic poorer performance is occurring. Usually this attribute is not so relevant by itself, but it might reinforce some other deduction when looking at the global picture.

The overall fitness for this drive is 61%.
The overall performance for this drive is 61%.

Question: Is the clicking related to the spin up time being below normal?

 

[0roo0roo]

don't trust the drive anymore
nothing is normal, failure can happen at any time now.
google up googles harddrive study. drives fail far more than you think, and even smart isn't much of a predicting factor.but once things do start going wrong the drives much much more likely to die.

 

[F1shF4t]

Hard Drives are a weird device in terms of reliability.
I have one 5 year old Seagate drive, powered on and off about 4000 times, 100 relocated sectors, had its pcb removed a few times by me as well as its insides exposed to outside air. It?s currently in my internet and temporary file transfer comp running 24/7 without any problems. There is another WD drive that clicks occasionally and has been doing that for over a year. Then I have had an ide drive suddenly died all of a sudden without any warning, just one day while using it.

Like 0roo0roo said once things start going wrong the drives are more likely to fail. Just use them for unimportant tasks so in the case that it does fail it won?t matter much. I have a few drives that I no longer trust, the two I mentioned and another WD 36gig raptor I just use the two WD ones in my media centre where all the files are redundant anyways.

 

[Old Hippie]

Hard Drives are a weird device in terms of reliability.

There's the understatement of the year!
Marc, I wouldn't be keeping anything important on that 120 gigger.

 

[MarcVenice]

Well, I'm going to unplug the WD, just to make sure THAT's the one that's clicking. That's why I wanted to know if the spin up attribute time was related to the clicking. No important stuff on there btw. I'm not really using it right now with Vista running on the 500gb HD. I do need it once in a while to review games under XP, especially previews.

 

[boglwe]

I just dealt with this on my raptor. turned off indexing and it stopped. You cant see what is going on in that HD but i can with the raptor, what it was doing was going to the middle of the platter and then Flashing back to the Start point of the needle thingy. It did this every second on the second, never missed a beat. I turned off Indexing in vista and it stopped it. Not its very quiet.