Is any kind of clicking sound normal?

[maw]

I have two WD drives, a 74GB Raptor and a 320GB Caviar, and both have been running in my system for the past 4 months with no problems.

I just upgraded my PC to Vista this weekend, and in the process I also moved the computer up on my desk so I could do a good dusting and cleaning. Since the computer is sitting right next to me now, I started noticing that every 5-7 minutes I hear a single click noise (actually, more like a "tock" sound) that seems to be coming from one of the hard drives. I have no idea if it's always done that, or if this is something new. It doesn't seem to affect the computer in any way, no drive errors or system freezes.

Also the WD site is kind of vague on this, it says "Normal drive sounds" include:
- Whining noise during drive spin-up
- Occasional clicks during data access
- Hard clicks during a head park operation (shutdown or sleep mode)

..and "Abnormal Drive sounds" include:
- High-pitched whining sound
- Vibration sounds due to either vibration in the mounting hardware or in rare cases, a drive failure
- Clicking or clunking sounds that occur repeatedly
- Grinding sounds

Anyway, I'm wondering if this might be normal behavior for some drives, or if its a sign of bad things to come?

 

[xenotype]

Its probably just starting its long, slow trek towards death, sorry. I'd suggest backing up the data to another drive or dvd-rs and running some testing software. The manufacturer's website usually has good diagnostic software meant for their drives, as well as the numerous freeware/trialware/pay-ware harddrive diagnostic utilities. But its a sure bet the drive is starting to die. Sucks, I know. If its still under warranty, I'd suggest trying to get it replaced via RMA.

 

[maw]

Its probably just starting its long, slow trek towards death, sorry. I'd suggest backing up the data to another drive or dvd-rs and running some testing software. The manufacturer's website usually has good diagnostic software meant for their drives, as well as the numerous freeware/trialware/pay-ware harddrive diagnostic utilities. But its a sure bet the drive is starting to die. Sucks, I know. If its still under warranty, I'd suggest trying to get it replaced via RMA.

yea, they are both less than a year old. I guess I'll give the diagnostic software a try first.

thanks!

 

[maw]

hmmm.. the WD diagostic tool report both drives are OK.

i'm wondering if this has something to do with Vista? I dug into the power settings and found out the drives were set to sleep after 5 minutes. I set it to never turn them off and I haven't heard the clicking sound since.

 

[shade_star]

Vista is horrible for its default power settings. Its shuts everything down.
You should be fine but if it starts to make noise under the always on condition you have issues and should back up immediately

 

[smashbros]

Just know that it is okay for there to be a clicking sound. It is just a matter of if the noise is a good click or a bad click. You should definitely have a backup of your data. I am pretty sure the raptors tend to be a little louder than your average drive, so maybe you did not hear it before because of the computer position. As for Vista, what you might be hearing is the OS indexing files, that tends to make a little more noise than XP in my opinion. You could also try ActiveSMART from this list:
http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/smart/dload.php
It is program that you can also try to determine if the drive is healthy or not (If you want a second opinion). It can be a little hard to determine what is the right kind of click, here are some links to what a bad and good click sounds like via youtube, I searched "click of death" to find the bad click and "hard disk drive open" to find some examples of a good click.
BAAAAD Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Faq8tetLRM
Good Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-VBlLuDic

 

[maw]

Just know that it is okay for there to be a clicking sound. It is just a matter of if the noise is a good click or a bad click. You should definitely have a backup of your data. I am pretty sure the raptors tend to be a little louder than your average drive, so maybe you did not hear it before because of the computer position. As for Vista, what you might be hearing is the OS indexing files, that tends to make a little more noise than XP in my opinion.

thanks for the reassurance. I do an automatic nightly backup of all my data across the network to my dedicated file server, so I'm not too worried about it.

Ever since I changed the power settings to never sleep the drives, I have not heard any clicking sounds at all, so i'm guessing what i was hearing was the drive waking up every now and then, in other words, a "good" clicking sound

Edit: I just watched those videos, and mine sounded exactly like "good" drive did, so I feel even more reassured now. Thanks!

 

[PilotKD]

hmmm.. the WD diagostic tool report both drives are OK.

i'm wondering if this has something to do with Vista? I dug into the power settings and found out the drives were set to sleep after 5 minutes. I set it to never turn them off and I haven't heard the clicking sound since.

That should solve the problem. When the drives are set to sleep, they'll make that clicking sound when something wakes them up and they begin to read.