Harddrive clicking is driving me crazy!

[andrzejpw]

My T42 has the 40 gig Hitachi drive. Now, I know clicking is normal with these drives, but lately it's just been driving me insane. It's still under warranty: will IBM replace the drive if I ask?

[kaplanfx]

You could try installing the S.M.A.R.T. tools (or centrino hardware control) and setting the acoustic management to 128 instead of 254. That typically makes drives nice and quiet though you lose a bit of performance.

-kaplanfx

[andrzejpw]

I'd rather not have to do that. Has IBM taken care of this in the past?

[kchung]

Did you Disk Fitness Test on it?

Has the ticking/clicking been getting worse and/or have you noticed any access delays when the clicking happens?

Check the Event Viewer logs - look for any disk or atapi errors in the System log. If you find any of those, I'd recommend backing up immediately and call IBM to get a new drive.

-Kevin

[Navck]

Most harddrives "click" because their heads go from one spot to another. But it can also mean headcrash (Your read/write head slamming into a 5400 RPM platter...)

[andrzejpw]

It's been clicking like this for a while, and I notice no access delays. I haven't run DFT yet, though I may (doesn't it require a FDD?). As far as event viewer, the only disk errors I have are ftdisk, which I found out are because my page file is fixed/too large.

[makai]

What I found out about the clicking is that if I disable the ATI Hotkey poller in services, the clicking stops. Unfortunately, doing this will disable Powerplay. No biggy for me as Powerplay mucks up my screen anyways. (Curse IBM)

Anyways, if you can get along without Powerplay, try disabling the Hotkey poller and see what happens.

makai