"Clicks" from the harddrive

[barry]

Im running FC3 on a R51 (1.7dothan, 60GB 4200RPM, DVD-MULTI) and, no matter which kernel I run, I get strange "clicks" when the harddrive is doing nothing after a while.
When the system is running for about an half hour and when the harddrive has like 3 seconds nothing on its mind, it starts to click already.
It doesn't matter if I have ACPI enabled or just APM.
Does anyone have the same problem?

Thanks alot!

[Volker]

The harddrive occasionally recalibrates itself. This is probably what you hear. If you are afraid of impeding hardware failure, check the smart log. If there are no errors logged then the sound is normal.

Code: Select all

[root@localhost ~]# smartctl -l error /dev/hda
smartctl version 5.33 [i386-redhat-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-4 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

[root@localhost ~]#

[barry]

Thank you, smartctl does not give any errors.
The strange thing is however, that this only happend under Linux and when it happens it clicks about 20 times in a row.

[Volker]

You probably have the accoustic management activated under other OS'es but not under linux. That makes seeks barely audible at a small performance cost. You can change it with hdparm to your liking.

[ldbobby]

Could it possibly be that you have laptop mode on? If it's on, it'll power down the HD when not in use.

[BillMorrow]

there is a firmware update available from hitachi that makes the HDD more quiet..

and then there is this:

http://www.hitachigst.com/downloads/ftool_196.exe