Strange sata Hardrive performance

Pivo504

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Feb 18, 2005
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So one of my regular sata hds 1000gb starts to spin and makes a spinning noise whenever I go to access the drive. Is this normal? I have another sata drive but 500gb that I never hear start to spin when I want to access data from it..also sometimes I hear it making clicking noises which I've never heard before either
 
if it just started doing it the head might be starting to go and id back it up asap and replace it if it starts getting worse or throws any errors.
 
It's actually been doing it for a long time. I always thought it was some kind of setting.. But when my other drive didn't do then I knew it must be something going on.. Is it possible to just move all folders from that drive to a new one?
 
Get a program like CrystalDiskInfo and see what it says about your drive: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

If the program shows Reallocated Sectors / Pending Sectors, that is a bad sign. Also make note of the power-on hours and the power-on count, as that provides good context about the age of the drive, and nothing lasts forever.

The clicking is a bad sign. There is a reason why it's known colloquially as the "click of death". But on the other hand, "clicking noises" is somewhat vague. Compared to an SSD, all mechanical hard drives are pretty noisy, especially while data is being read or written.

How old is the drive? I'm guessing it's probably not very new if it's only 1TB. Some drives are simply more noisy than others. 7200rpm drives tend to be noisier than 5400rpm drives, for example. The number of platters (spinning discs within the drive) matters also, with more platters generally being noisier. If it's a very old drive then it might have 3-5 platters as that was required at one point in order to achieve that capacity. A newer drive with that same capacity might only have 1 platter. So if one of your drives is a 5400rpm drive with a single platter then it would be pretty quiet while a 3-5 platter 7200rpm drive would be very loud in comparison.

Is it possible to just move all folders from that drive to a new one?

Moving data between storage locations is no different with a hard drive than anything else. If it's simply static files (images, movies, songs, etc) then there should be no issues. If it's the drive that you have windows installed on, then you might run into some issues if you try to copy everything at once as some of those files would be currently in-use and that might cause problems.
 
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I think some drives have built in power saving independent of the OS power saving.
I'm sure one of mine used to shut off by itself before I enabled OS wide power saving, so I cant tell if it happens any more.

Clicking noises might just be head movements, you perhaps can tell better if not.
 
I think some drives have built in power saving independent of the OS power saving.
I'm sure one of mine used to shut off by itself before I enabled OS wide power saving, so I cant tell if it happens any more.

Clicking noises might just be head movements, you perhaps can tell better if not.
This could be what it is. It's like the drive is asleep until I go to access files on it then it wakes up and starts spinning. The hard drive is not very old. Maybe 5 years tops and it's a 7200rpm. It's not an OS drive. It has sum games on it along with music and mostly backup files and maybe a few programs. Is there a way to shut this off
 
Get a program like CrystalDiskInfo and see what it says about your drive: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

If the program shows Reallocated Sectors / Pending Sectors, that is a bad sign. Also make note of the power-on hours and the power-on count, as that provides good context about the age of the drive, and nothing lasts forever.

The clicking is a bad sign. There is a reason why it's known colloquially as the "click of death". But on the other hand, "clicking noises" is somewhat vague. Compared to an SSD, all mechanical hard drives are pretty noisy, especially while data is being read or written.

How old is the drive? I'm guessing it's probably not very new if it's only 1TB. Some drives are simply more noisy than others. 7200rpm drives tend to be noisier than 5400rpm drives, for example. The number of platters (spinning discs within the drive) matters also, with more platters generally being noisier. If it's a very old drive then it might have 3-5 platters as that was required at one point in order to achieve that capacity. A newer drive with that same capacity might only have 1 platter. So if one of your drives is a 5400rpm drive with a single platter then it would be pretty quiet while a 3-5 platter 7200rpm drive would be very loud in comparison.



Moving data between storage locations is no different with a hard drive than anything else. If it's simply static files (images, movies, songs, etc) then there should be no issues. If it's the drive that you have windows installed on, then you might run into some issues if you try to copy everything at once as some of those files would be currently in-use and that might cause problems.
I'll try to get CrystalDiskInfo and see what happens. I kind of want to get rid of these two sata drives for SSD but it's nice to have two drives and just back up everything on the second instead of only having one drive
 
This could be what it is. It's like the drive is asleep until I go to access files on it then it wakes up and starts spinning. The hard drive is not very old. Maybe 5 years tops and it's a 7200rpm. It's not an OS drive. It has sum games on it along with music and mostly backup files and maybe a few programs. Is there a way to shut this off
There may be a tool from the drive manufacturer to change it.
 
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