hard drive bad? click nosies

[Heon2574]

WD100GB 7200rpm HD with 8MB cache
(signature below)

while looking at some photos on my hard drive, no rigorous drive activity, it suddenly made two distinct clicks ( 2 secs long ). i could still browse my photos - no problem with data loss, and this is not the first time this has happened. what should i do? Why is it making noises? This is, i believe, the third time this has happened. The first two was a long time ago (maybe 8 months ago) and up to this point everything was fine. I'm compelled to continue using my hard drive for the time being and will continue making back-ups as usual.

[morriswindgate]

Some drives tend to make click and hums sometimes, but you should always run the diagnostic program from the hard drive manufacture's site to make sure that the drive doesn't have problems.
Also many virus/trojans will cause a drive to search and hunt, so you need to make sure that you do not have any of these. But check the drive first.

[Heon2574]

Originally posted by morriswindgate
Some drives tend to make click and hums sometimes

Clicks? you talk about it as a normal occurance. Are you saying that this is normal and does not mean the drive is bad?

[Matt_Smi]

My WD hard drive did something similar, except it clicked while booting up. See the thread below for more details. I am also worried about it, I e-mailed WD and explained what happened. I am still waiting for a response and will post in in my thread when I get one.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?threadid=87132

[morriswindgate]

I am saying that there are other things which will cause a click or long hum. But I also stated that you should download and run the manufacture's free diagnostic program on the drive. Not only will this program tell you if anything is wrong, but if it does find a problem it will give you a code that you will use to get a replacement drive from WD.
I cannot tell you strongly enough that you need to go ahead and run this program to make sure the drive is ok, otherwise you stand to lose everything on the drive should it fail completely.

[Matt_Smi]

Yeah I already ran the WD diagnostic test, It said that the drive passed, and was working fine. it did not give me any error codes or anything. I am still not sure if I trust the drive though, so I backed just about everything up to my flash drive and CD's. What exactly does the diagnostic test, test?

[Heon2574]

Drive Information:

* Manufacturer: Western Digital Corporation
* Serial Number: WMA8D1153414
* Model Number: WDC WD1000BB-00CAA1
* Firmware Rev: 710.W771

Test Results:

TEST PASSED!
Congratulations! The Data Lifeguard Diagnositc utility has determined that your hard drive is functioning properly. If you still encounter problems on your hard drive that you feel were not identified in the Data Lifeguard utility, please contact us for technical support.

[morriswindgate]

OK, If the drive passed and you are still getting clicks and hums, you need to run a virus/trojan scan, adware/spyware scan and then defrag you drive.

[Matt_Smi]

Yeah mine said the same thing Heon. I dont think its a virus because I have an antivirus program that it always scanning my computer, and I run adaware often. I guess I will just have to worry, wait and see. The drive only did it once so maybe it was just a fluke thing. But I still dont really trust it like I used to.

[Heon2574]

Originally posted by morriswindgate
OK, If the drive passed and you are still getting clicks and hums, you need to run a virus/trojan scan, adware/spyware scan and then defrag you drive.

i had previously restored my computer using norton ghost. (made the image after a clean windows install) so im pretty sure i have no virus/trojan whatsoever. I keep my PC EXTREMELY clean and had practically no software installed.

I ran adaware and spybot search and destroy - no virus/trojan detected. Plus i defraagged my drive before i made the ghost image. Like i said I keep everything tidy in my pc and hard-drive.

[morriswindgate]

The click that you hear is the voice coil (the hard drive heads are attached to a spring device that resembles the coil and magnet on a speaker) moving the heads according to where the file fragments yo are using are located. The reason that I stated you should defrag is that the data you are using may now be all over the disk forcing the heads to move quite a bit in order to find everything. And if they are moving all over the place you will get a click or a hum as it searches for the data. In this case there is nothing wrong with the disk (an the diagnostics show this and they are accurate), but the data is all over the place. If you do not defrag when needed, you put a lot of work on the head accuator.

[Heon2574]

I guess the only course of action for any user experiencing these problems is to back up all your important data and hope for the best. In the end the drive may continue to work fine or it may not. Either way you'll have your data safe. After all drives are cheap, not your data.

[Heon2574]

ty wise morriswindgate. you are extremly helpful but the best thing i can do is just backup my important data and use the drive until it fails (if it does).

[morriswindgate]

If the diagnostic tools showed the drive is working correctly (and it checks both the disk integerty and the electronics) then the click you are hearing is just normal operation or you have a program running that may be causing activity for the read heads in the drive (this is why i mentioned virus/trojans and adware/spyware, but some other types of legit programs can also cause this, such as realtime backup utilities)

[glc]

Don't forget to run scandisk or chkdsk, clicks are also symptomatic of a drive trying to seek through data corruption.

[Heon2574]

ty for all your help :)

[Matt_Smi]

Yeah thanks for the help Morris. I have my data backed up so like you said Heon there is really nothing I can do but wait and hope that the drive wont fail. But if it does it does and I will have my things backed up.