Clicking=always bad?

S

stealthballer123

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
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I bought a couple 3 tb enterprise drives refurbed and they both click like crazy whenever I am accessing anything on there(new game drives).

I forgot how to read the data on the drives to see how many hours they have on there, but these suckers are super clicky. I thought a mouse was trying to chew through the wall(we had a mousepocalypse last year and I am forever paranoid about mice now).

Should I be worried?
 
Bad? Nah. I had two drives which each started clicking. And they both died. I think it was just coincidence. ;)

Crystaldisk. Now. And back up your drives even sooner.
 
So crystal disk shows both drives as "good"
I don't honestly have a clue what I am looking at with all the stuff on the bottom.

Damn things took 6 hours to format, I forgot how long it takes to actually do anything other than quick format.
 
So, to answer your initial question - YES - drives making clicking noises is universally a bad thing.

Seek noises are fine - they can range from low grumbles to mid-frequency 'scratching' type noises, but any distinct pops or clicks is BAD.

Get your money back, and for additional unsolicited advice, never buy anything refurbished that has moving parts in it.
 
What kind of drives are they? Noise varies by model/manufacturer. So just clean them up with a low level format and you should be good to go since you're SMART status is good. You can get more detailed info and relocate data from any bad sectors (probably not needed) if you are still concerned by running

> chkdsk <vol> /f /r /v

FYI - This will take hours and eat your RAM.
 
I agree some drives make more noise than others by design. Also some drives use aggressive parking which may sound like a clicking sound. However it should not be parking while reading.

A good status from CrystalDiskInfo tells you the drive believes it is operating normally.
 
drescherjm said:
I agree some drives make more noise than others by design. Also some drives use aggressive parking which may sound like a clicking sound. However it should not be parking while reading.

A good status from CrystalDiskInfo tells you the drive believes it is operating normally.
Click to expand...

Correct. Some drives are noisier than others. It honestly depends what kind of click. CrystalDiskInfo is the best option to see if those clicks mean anything.
 
Add the fact that enterprise drives prioritise performance over silence. They are louder than similar consumer drives because they try to eek out more performance while not giving a crap if they make alot of noise in the process. So clicking is not 100% bad. But you should be vary of it. And the really bad sign is when a drive that wasn't clicking suddenly start clicking.
 
So here's how you know if click is bad or good. While the drive is running. Hold the drive chassis on the sides so you can 'feel' the head movements. You'll know if if's normal if it's random when reading random data. You know there's an issue if you can 'feel' the heads basically trying to read something, then all activity stopping, then they try to read the same area again, and this repeats a few times. If it's doing this and you still have access to your data, back up NOW because you may never be able to access that drive again.
 
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