Is hard drive clicking ALWAYS bad?

[arachn1d]

For as long as I can remember one of my drives in an external enclosure has been clicking. Now, I'm not sure if this is me being lucky and it not failing, or if some drives are just loud.

It's not the "seeking" noise, but it's definitely a loud click when it spins up.

Bad, or probably ok? It's an external drive so I can't run a S.M.A.R.T status on it.

 

[westrock2000]

A short quick click after spin up is normal. Half the drives I have ever owned have had a distinct click upon spin up. The others have just been quite after the ramp up.

I just bought 2 Seagate drives and one of them is definantly more talkative then the other. It seems to work fine and SMART returns nothing, but certain activities will make it emit a click. I put them in a RAID 5 so well see how that goes.