What causes a hard drive to release a single "click" sound periodically?

[Xenphor]

The sound I'm hearing (which I assume is coming from either one of my 2 hard drives), is a single, faint clicking sound followed by a very soft "hum" sound. It is distinctive and doesn't sound like normal hard drive operation. I've been hearing such a sound with about 4+ hard drives now, all WD Blues+1 black. Is this sound something that a drive would make when spinning down or using some power saving feature? That's the only thing I could think of, other than some type of physical damage, which seems unlikely because the drives perform well.

On a laptop I had, I would get single clicks followed by another click right after. That series, I noticed, did affect the performance of the computer because there would be abrupt pauses until after that second click.

Is there some way to test that my drives are healthy and performing up to spec?

 

[ch33zw1z]

Western digital data lifeguard

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?level1=6&lang=en

 

[Xenphor]

Western digital data lifeguard

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?level1=6&lang=en

Using that tool I did extended tests of both drives and they passed.

 

[tweakboy]

The sound I'm hearing (which I assume is coming from either one of my 2 hard drives), is a single, faint clicking sound followed by a very soft "hum" sound. It is distinctive and doesn't sound like normal hard drive operation. I've been hearing such a sound with about 4+ hard drives now, all WD Blues+1 black. Is this sound something that a drive would make when spinning down or using some power saving feature? That's the only thing I could think of, other than some type of physical damage, which seems unlikely because the drives perform well.

On a laptop I had, I would get single clicks followed by another click right after. That series, I noticed, did affect the performance of the computer because there would be abrupt pauses until after that second click.

Is there some way to test that my drives are healthy and performing up to spec?

Its ticking.. not good. it shouldnt work, but if it does backup everything do it now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ch33zw1z]

I wouldn't worry about it then. If you can't help yourself, contact WDC support. Get a jump on backing up your data now so if one of those does go bad then you won't have to post the "omg my dataz!!" thread

 

[Xenphor]

Well I wouldn't worry about that anyway since most of the things I need are in the cloud/internet. It still would be nice to know what exactly is happening when the drives make that sound.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What are your Windows HDD spin-down settings? If you have it set to turn off HDDs after 15 minutes, then that could be the reason that you are hearing that noise.

 

[Xenphor]

What are your Windows HDD spin-down settings? If you have it set to turn off HDDs after 15 minutes, then that could be the reason that you are hearing that noise.

I thought that was the case because control panel says the disks will shutdown after 20min. I did a test to see if that was the cause of the click and after waiting 20min+ I didn't hear anything.

I just wish I could reproduce the sound.

edit: I changed the power settings to turn off hard disks after 1 min and now I hear the sound more frequently so maybe it is related.