Weird clicking noise

d3moliti0n · 16 Feb 2009 at 23:35

Hi

Basically whenever I turn on my PC now, there is a weird clicking noise what sounds like it is coming from the hard drive. This lasts for about 10-20 seconds and stops just before the Windows XP loading screen appears. I have been reading up about what the noise could be and most reference say it's a sign of impending hard drive failure. I've scanned both hard drives in my PC for errors and it's found nothing, and the status of both hard drives is 'Healthy' on the computer management/disk management screen. Should I be worried about this? Should I invest in a new hard drive sooner rather than later? Anybody have any idea what this clicking noise is?

Thanks for your help.

postmanfw · 16 Feb 2009 at 23:42

Weird clicking from hard drive is not a good sign...i would backup anything important now just in case

CaseyChaos · 16 Feb 2009 at 23:45

run hdtune, if it finds errors then its on it's way out, there are spare sectors the hdd will keep so when one goes it has a spare, if it's finding errors then all the spares have been used and it's now eating into the ones needed

ConnectionFX · 16 Feb 2009 at 23:50

your HDD is about to fail!

backup. buy new drive and dont risk it.

had a western digital in my girls PC that clicked. went down last week and is not recognised in the bios any more

Audigex · 17 Feb 2009 at 00:22

I've had a HDD in a system that's been doing it for the best part of 3 years. It's not usually a good thing, but it's not necessarily bad.

At the same time, I have an iPod that will only play clicks :-(

d3moliti0n · 17 Feb 2009 at 01:04

I've just scanned the main hard drive in my system (using HD Tune) which has the Windows installation on it and it's reporting that there are no errors/damaged sectors at all and it is healthy. I am going to scan the other hard drive tomorrow and see if there is anything wrong with that one.

998cc · 17 Feb 2009 at 01:07

My old harddrive started to click and a few days later it died on me.

Backup anything important now while you can just incase.

hegemon · 17 Feb 2009 at 01:28

Install Speedfan and look at the S.M.A.R.T tab, it will show all the internal drive attributes and give you an idea of the health of the drive.

Speedfan: http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

What is S.M.A.R.T: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology

Faffer · 17 Feb 2009 at 11:14

I don't think hard drive scans will inform you of issues with the mechanics of the hard drive. It will only tell you if there are problems with the actual disk inside the drive.

I'd back up and prepare for replacing the drive.

d3moliti0n · 17 Feb 2009 at 12:18

I've scanned both hard drives now and there are no errors on any of the two. I also tried that SpeedFan thing and checked the S.M.A.R.T tab and the health of one of the drives is 100% and on the other it is about 90-95%. I'm still getting the clicking noise though whenever I turn the PC on, it only started happening last week I think.

CaseyChaos · 17 Feb 2009 at 12:29

looks like you need to back up and get a new drive, like faffer said it seems like the mechanics are failing

postmanfw · 17 Feb 2009 at 12:50

The clicking is caused by the arm not reading the disk properly.

Just had a mates one that was the same. PC would get so far then just become unresponsive and freeze. HDD tune showed the drive was all fine with no bad sectors and the drive could be scanned (for virus/spyware) in another machine no problem.

In the end i ran a program called HDD Regenerator which is a bootable dos iso.

http://www.dposoft.net/

and that found and fixed some bad sectors and its now running fine.

Got no doubt though that the hd is about to give up the ghost

Email in trust if you want to discuss more about the program

d3moliti0n · 17 Feb 2009 at 13:03

Well, I just took the side off my computer, unplugged one of the hard drives from the computer (both power connector and SATA connector) and I still got the clicking noise when I booted up the computer, then I reconnected that hard drive, disconnected the other hard drive (both power and SATA connectors) and booted up the computer, and I still got the clicking noise. I don't understand how the hard drive can click if it's not connected to a power source to start up the hard drive? So I'm thinking it could be something else in my computer, although everything else looks fine.

postmanfw · 17 Feb 2009 at 13:27

It cant...must be something else causing the noise?

cpu/psu or gpu fan perhaps?

Faffer · 17 Feb 2009 at 13:27

Do you have a floppy drive and boot up floppy seek enabled in the BIOS?

postmanfw · 17 Feb 2009 at 13:31

oops never thought to mention that as never had one in any of my builds.

d3moliti0n · 17 Feb 2009 at 16:11

I don't have a floppy drive installed on the computer. The only thing installed is an optical DVD RW drive. The clicking noise sounds like it is coming from the front end of the PC tower, basically where the hard drives/optical drive and on/off switch is. So I'm putting it down to either the optical drive or the power switch/something to do with the case or the onboard sounds that the computer makes, eg. caps lock etc.