Heard the infamous *click* *click* coming from one of my hard drives. Problem is, I have four internals and three externals, so I have no way of finding out which one was doing the clicking. I ran a diagnostic tool and all seem to check out fine. Any suggestions for isolating the problem? Also, I used the Western Digital diagnostic tool on a Maxtor external, and it didn't like it too much, though it produced an 'ok' result. The Maxtor is the oldest drive so I'm suspicious. Anyone recommend a good diagnostic tool to monitor the hard drives? or a good way of monitoring them so I can be confident they are good to go?
A click click is usually a bad thing yes, one of my drives has it periodically say every 3mths (I've also had this before and worse on other drives) but I run seatools & spinrite6 to correct any errors and it stops after a while and the drive trundles on, 10 months now. So, I make backup and hopefully the clicking doesn't progress to a louder one followed by a whirl as that IS terminal! Advice would be to backup as the next time the drive may not spin again!..although from my experience you have some time. Run chkdsk x: /f /r. If its physical though there's not much that can be done. edit : Keep your drives cool. - I keep the temp down inside the machine and all my external drives now have built in fans.
When the clicking begins,try isolating the potentially faulty drive ,by unplugging one drive after the other,except of course the C drive. That way the source of the clicks should be evident. Here is an excellent freebie which should give additional information ; Active Disk Monitor This article here will help decipher the results The manufacturers diagnostic tools are usually the best for correcting bad sectors,except in this case,the problem could well be due to a controller or electrical failure in the drive. So if you can isolate the source,suggest you replace that disk.
The problem with most HDD diagnostics is that they only can diagnose pending read\write failures. = disk surface problems. A "click-click" sounds more like a pending mechanical breakdown.
Hi, I have a drive that clicks occasionally, once every few months, usually when it starts spinning fast - like when I power up a virtualization program ... it usually does when it's colder, in the winter. It's been doing this for 2 years now, working without any problems, no errors reported in any way by any diagnostic tool ... I don't know what to say ... data is backed up, so ... it's IT force majore ... Mrk
I have a drive that makes a horrific noise after a cold start. It disappears after about 5 minutes. It's been like that for 18 months but is still going strong!
Hi Fontaine, Don't know if this has anything to do with what you are expericing. My external hd was acting up by just not unloading the photos to the screen! The window for that file would be blank! I was considering using another and transferring what good ones were left. I removed the hd from the case, used my portable adapter cable and power unit, front usb port, ALL folders with all photos came up! No more porblems! Haven't had time to test the hd case yet, but plan to check further to see if something is wrong with the housing electronice etc. Have you tried moving the usb cable to another port? Or even trying the questioned drive in another enviroment? May be worth a try if the data is very important to save...... I have no answers as to what caused my conditions yet, hopefully it will cure yours if so desired to try it. Will post the results when and if I get any! Good luck: Sparkzam3
