New WD Raptor drives in RAID 0 go "clickity, click"

[Hurricane]

G'day all!

I've a P4P800 Deluxe, 3.2, 1G with two WD 36G Raptor drives in RAID 0 config with 2 Maxtor 80G, 7200RPM in RAID 0 Config for storage.

The question is: is it normal for those WD 36 G drives to click? NO data is being written to the drives. It's not a grinding noise, they just click once every 3-5 seconds or so. I pulled them out and felt them to see if one was doing it and not the other, but they seem to click at the same time. I even listened with a screwdriver as a sounding rod. Same thing. The drives are brand new.

I had one a few days before the other, because I was just going to use the one drive. Ended up buying a second drive. I never reformated the first Raptor drive that had an operating system on it. I figured once the two were RAIDed together, partitioned and formatted this wouldn't be an issue.

Is this correct? That wouldn't have anything to do with that would it?

Once XP was loaded for the Intel SATA RAID, I needed files I had on the two Maxtor drives for the rest of the setup. It was then I became aware that I could use the VIA RAID for the Maxtor drives along with the Intel SATA. But the drives still made that sound before the Maxtors even had power connected to them. The Maxtors in Via RAID was my original set up for this motherboard.

Anyone have insight to the 36G Raptor click? It's starting to anoy me.

ThanXX!

[Gizmo]

Any clicking coming from a hard drive during operation is a sign of oncoming failure. Start backing things up ASAP. I'm not that knowledgable on RAID arrays, but the clicking is a sign of failure.

Originally Posted by Hurricane I had one a few days before the other, because I was just going to use the one drive. Ended up buying a second drive. I never reformated the first Raptor drive that had an operating system on it. I figured once the two were RAIDed together, partitioned and formatted this wouldn't be an issue. Is this correct? That wouldn't have anything to do with that would it?

Yes. No.

[David M]

Raptors are a bit noisy...I have 4 of them all making noise. The chances of two being bad at the same time is pretty remote, especially if they both click at the same time. Its always good to have your data backed up though, regardless.

[glc]

I'd download and run WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to make sure the drives are healthy. Because of the RAID, you may have to use the Windows diags, not the DOS diags.

[Hurricane]

ThanX for all the replies. As GLC suggested, I downloaded the WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Was able to use them both in windows and DOS.

What's puzzling is the Diagnostics for windows see the WD RAID drives as one USB drive. What's the story behind this? Even still, it passed the tests.

When I ran the utility in DOS, I noticed they did not make the clicking sounds at all. However, the utility was able to identify them correctly and independantly dispite the RAID configuration. They both passed in DOS.

But, they still click in windows??? Normal? Is is some quirk between XP and the Intel ICH5R chipset?