I was doing some stuff tonight with updating drivers on my video card when i noticed my storage drive makes a soft tap/thump every 30 seconds now. it seems to be working fine, but i cant figure out whats causing it to make the noise. I tried to get the WD disk checker to work but it crashed upon launch so im kind of confused. any advice would be great.
hard drive makes regular tapping noise
- Thread starter Bones
- Start date
Every time I've ever heard a hard drive click, it either is completely breaking or is going to within 24 hours, so my only advice is to back everything up and buy a new one.
Pretty much this. It means some point of friction is occurring in the part that spins, which means it will only get worse from there.
If it's an intermittent click then it's possible the platter servo tracks are becoming damaged. The heads are on an arm that positions them on the rotating platters. It used to be that they were positioned in an absolute manner, as in they would go .0253" from the edge of the disc, in order to read or write a specific track. As density increased, though, they couldn't make the head positioner accurate enough for this to work, so no they have two read heads on each head, one is for data and one is called the servo track. The heads go the to approximate location where they need to be, then the servo track head is read and the head is adjusted until it's over the desired track.
The servo tracks are preencoded at the factory, and cannot be repaired. But they are just as "writable" as the data track, so if the drive fails in some minor way and allows the head to write over a servo track, then finding that track can be a problem later.
Further, the heads don't touch the platters. If they did they'd scrape off the molecular thin layer of magnetic material on the platter. The platters must be spinning fast enough to create an air current over them which the heads float on, just a tiny fraction of a millimeter above the platter. If the platters slow down too much, the drive senses an impending head crash (ie, head falling onto the platter(s)) and it slams the head to the side of the drive into the head parking position, which is off the platters. This is the type of clicking problem that a short time in the freezer will often overcome briefly.
Some drives also park the heads briefly if the servo tracks seem weird, in order to reset their positioning knowledge of the head.
As such, the clicks suggest your drive is damaged, and you cannot expect the drive to last much longer. Either your platter motor bearings are dry and the motor can no longer provide the consistent speed necessary to prevent head crashes, or the servo tracks are starting to become too damaged for the drive to rely on.
Back everything important up and replace the drive.
The servo tracks are preencoded at the factory, and cannot be repaired. But they are just as "writable" as the data track, so if the drive fails in some minor way and allows the head to write over a servo track, then finding that track can be a problem later.
Further, the heads don't touch the platters. If they did they'd scrape off the molecular thin layer of magnetic material on the platter. The platters must be spinning fast enough to create an air current over them which the heads float on, just a tiny fraction of a millimeter above the platter. If the platters slow down too much, the drive senses an impending head crash (ie, head falling onto the platter(s)) and it slams the head to the side of the drive into the head parking position, which is off the platters. This is the type of clicking problem that a short time in the freezer will often overcome briefly.
Some drives also park the heads briefly if the servo tracks seem weird, in order to reset their positioning knowledge of the head.
As such, the clicks suggest your drive is damaged, and you cannot expect the drive to last much longer. Either your platter motor bearings are dry and the motor can no longer provide the consistent speed necessary to prevent head crashes, or the servo tracks are starting to become too damaged for the drive to rely on.
Back everything important up and replace the drive.
(Mechanical) hard drives are supposed to make soft random clicking noises during operation. It's what they do.
However, if you start noticing any sort of pattern to the clicking (and you're not running some kind of pattern-y workload), then yes, it's probably time to back up and replace. It's possible that you have drive sleep set to 30 seconds and the drive is just doing what you told it to, but it's better to mistakenly replace a good drive than it is to stubbornly keep using a failing one.
--Patrick
However, if you start noticing any sort of pattern to the clicking (and you're not running some kind of pattern-y workload), then yes, it's probably time to back up and replace. It's possible that you have drive sleep set to 30 seconds and the drive is just doing what you told it to, but it's better to mistakenly replace a good drive than it is to stubbornly keep using a failing one.
--Patrick
In a very quiet environment you may hear the drive seeking, which will sound like a series of irregular vibrations, but a solid, single tap/thud is abnormal. Mechanical harddrives pretty closely follow the bathtub failure curve. They'll fail early in life, or late in life. If it was very old or very new then it wouldn't surprise me, so it's not too surprising you're getting it now even though it's new. A quick replacement should resolve the tapping, and once it gets past the early part of the failure curve it should give you many years of happy service.
Dude.
There was a time we didn't know this stuff and had to learn from someone else (or our own mistakes), too.
Inexperience != stupidity.
--Patrick
