Constant hard drive clicking noise

[GXCross]

Anyone else have a problem where the hard drive is constantly clicking every few seconds, even though the computer is not doing anything? I have this problem on my new T60 widescreen. The hard drive light does flash when the drive clicks, but despite having nothing running, it keeps clicking. I recall a similar issue a couple years ago on a Compaq laptop as well as a co-worker's Dell, but back then we fixed the problem by installing Intel Application Accelerator. Unfortunately, that program is no longer supported and doesn't work on the new chipset. Any ideas?

[whakojacko]

almost all computers will do this as a result of paging, that is using parts of your hard drive as slow access ram. You can disable pagefileing in settings, but make sure you have enough ram

[robweg]

Nope, its not the paging. The clicks are there even when the system is idle. I had the same problem with my new T60 and after i reinstalled the system the clicking was gone. So it has to be one of the masses of processes which are running in the preinstalled system. You could also try to kill(or suspend) the running processes one by one with this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... lorer.mspx and see whats actually causing the clicks.

cheers, rob

[steveg47]

Excellent utility. Thanks Rob

[christopher_wolf]

An additional good utility to have is DiskMon if you want to check what is accessing your HDD when. It also serves as a HDD actvity light, which comes in handy for those systems that either don't have one or have one out of sight.