After Upgrading HDD (Cloning), Loud Clicking Sounds

[bautista.ekonomista]

Hello fellow Thinkpadders!

After reading many posts here regarding HDD upgrading and cloning, I decided to give it a try.

I bought a 500GB Seagate Momentus 5400.6 2.5" HDD for my T61, whose default HDD needed some serious upgrading (it's 160GB, Hitachi 5400). The whole cloning process took about an hour or so.

Initially, I thought that the upgrading and cloning was a success. A few minutes later, however, I started to hear loud, clicking sounds. During such, I was also not able to access Windows Explorer (it just hangs) but I can still access the internet and browse through web pages. I only solved such problem when I slightly shook my T61.

After rebooting the hard drive, I thought that the problem had been already solved. But I was wrong. The new Seagate HDD reverted to its occasional clicking, which was only solved by again slightly shaking the hard drive.

Do you think there's something wrong with my new Seagate HDD? Or is it just normal for a new internal HDD to click loudly?

I hope to hear from you very soon.

Thanks a lot!

[Eudoxus]

Far frome being an expert I would say that you should return your Seagate HDD and to demand it to be replaced by a new one.

[bautista.ekonomista]

Far frome being an expert I would say that you should return your Seagate HDD and to demand it to be replaced by a new one.

Hi Eudoxus!

How come?

[ArtShapiro]

It's surprising, although not unknown, for a brand new drive to fail quickly or even be dead out of the box. But it's rare enough to raise eyebrows. Do you have access to any sort of external enclosure to try the new drive?

Art

[bautista.ekonomista]

It's surprising, although not unknown, for a brand new drive to fail quickly or even be dead out of the box. But it's rare enough to raise eyebrows. Do you have access to any sort of external enclosure to try the new drive?

Art

Art,

I am also surprised with the new Seagate HDD's performance, especially with the clicking sound. It is not ambient; you really can hear the clicking/knocking sound in the T61 HDD area (palmrest, right side). What's bad when that happens is the laptop stalls. And it can take as long as 2 minutes for the laptop to return to a workable state.

Yup, I have an external HDD enclosure, which by the way the same enclosure I used to do the cloning. When put the stock Hitachi HDD back in my T61 and the Seagate HDD in the HDD enclosure, the clicking sound stopped for the latter. I don't know why, but it just stopped.

I am now contacting the online seller here in Manila from whom I bought the Seagate drive.

To my fellow ThinkPadders, have you had the same experience with Seagate Momentus 500GB 5400.6 HDDs? Or is it just me?

Thanks!

[bautista.ekonomista]

Art,

I am also surprised with the new Seagate HDD's performance, especially with the clicking sound. It is not ambient; you really can hear the clicking/knocking sound in the T61 HDD area (palmrest, right side). What's bad when that happens is the laptop stalls. And it can take as long as 2 minutes for the laptop to return to a workable state.

Yup, I have an external HDD enclosure, which by the way the same enclosure I used to do the cloning. When put the stock Hitachi HDD back in my T61 and the Seagate HDD in the HDD enclosure, the clicking sound stopped for the latter. I don't know why, but it just stopped.

I am now contacting the online seller here in Manila from whom I bought the Seagate drive.

To my fellow ThinkPadders, have you had the same experience with Seagate Momentus 500GB 5400.6 HDDs? Or is it just me?

Thanks!

No one...?

[Neil]

Take a look at this Thinkwiki article: Problem with hard drive clicking... Even so, it seems you may have a defective hard drive. Have you looked iinto getting it replaced?

[bautista.ekonomista]

Take a look at this Thinkwiki article: Problem with hard drive clicking... Even so, it seems you may have a defective hard drive. Have you looked iinto getting it replaced?

Neil,

Yeah. I had it replaced yesterday. Good thing the online seller had prompt service.

When I reinstalled the new replacement hard drive and cloned my old drive (once again), there was no hint of clicking...until after a few hours of use. The same clicking sound found it way again to my ears.

With almost all hope lost on the HDD (I don't want to call the online seller again, since not only is it inconvenient for the messenger to deliver the product, it's also costly for me to do such) I resorted to doing a factory reinstall of my Vista license.

And voila! As of this writing I haven't heard any clicking sound (yet).

Here's me hoping that the clicking-cum-knocking HDD sound will finally come to rest.

I'll update you guys in the following hours/days.

Thanks!

[nullnullfzu]

Hi

A good thing you did! I used to work a lot on hardware data recovery from HDDs. Folks! Clicking sound is a 99% chance your drive is going to die very soon.

Besides the usable surface you have a lot of information on each disk side that helps to position the head. There are hundreds of reasons why it could click, tick scratch,... One is it gets a very wrong reading and tries to recover its positioning - by brute force one could say. These can become as strong as you can feel it in the housing even of a big tower. Not good. Sign to say the head is damadged. Or the decoding channel. Or the controller. Or...

If your drive starts to make bizar noises from one minute to the next - don't fiddle with hdparm. Go safe your data and replace it.

Cheers

[bautista.ekonomista]

nullnullfzu,

Thanks for those words.

I don't know why or how, but the clicking sound has just vanished. I am still waiting for the clicking sound for my newly replaced HDD to come back, but it still has not. Maybe it's the fact that I've been running my T61 for two days non-stop already. Or maybe it's the numerous cloning I've done (yes, I've already done a fourth clone on this 2nd HDD).

I do hope that the clicking would indeed stop. I guess it happens whenever the drive parks or accesses data. it's the same clicking sound I got from the first drive I received and it's either the batch production just went nuts or there's something really wrong about my laptop or anything.

P.S. I read somewhere that it might be the insufficient power supplied to the HDD by the laptop that's causing the clicking sound. Given your experience repairing laptop HDDs, do you think it's a plausible explanation?

[nullnullfzu]

Honestly, the power supplies I had at the lab were always build to be more than sufficient. At the time I did that work 500 GB drives were extreme sizes to think of in 3,5'' formats. The thing I said before was rather meant for disks that start making noises after certain life without noises. But simply looking at the way the head actuator is build I'd it's reasonable explanation.

Since we are talking about a T61 you should have a SATA type power connection where the connections of 2.5'' and 3.5'' drives are the same. So just to make a test you can easily plug your drive into a tower where the power supply should be sufficient in any way. If it stops clicking it means you do have a power problem. Which does not means that your laptop is broken. Just that it can't deliver onto that power demand.

The thing I wouldn't quite understand in this is that if it really is a power supply problem it should appear right away. I'm not aware of a reason why the power _becomes_ insufficient.

Greatings

[bautista.ekonomista]

Honestly, the power supplies I had at the lab were always build to be more than sufficient. At the time I did that work 500 GB drives were extreme sizes to think of in 3,5'' formats. The thing I said before was rather meant for disks that start making noises after certain life without noises. But simply looking at the way the head actuator is build I'd it's reasonable explanation.

Since we are talking about a T61 you should have a SATA type power connection where the connections of 2.5'' and 3.5'' drives are the same. So just to make a test you can easily plug your drive into a tower where the power supply should be sufficient in any way. If it stops clicking it means you do have a power problem. Which does not means that your laptop is broken. Just that it can't deliver onto that power demand.

The thing I wouldn't quite understand in this is that if it really is a power supply problem it should appear right away. I'm not aware of a reason why the power _becomes_ insufficient.

Greatings

But I thought that the newer drives consume less power than the older drives. If I am to follow such logic, then it would only make sense that the stock Hitachi drive that came with my T61 is consuming more power than the Seagate drive that's currently installed in my laptop, doesn't it?

I do hope that the clicking sound isn't really because of the lack of power from my T61.

Again, thanks for the reply!

[bautista.ekonomista]

Fellow ThinkPadders,

Just a random question:

Can a T61 support a Seagate Momentus 500GB 5400.6 HDD?

As I was comparing the datasheets of both the stock Hitachi 160GB 5400 HDD and the Seagate 500GB 5400 HDD I'm using right now, I found out that the former has an interface of 1.5GB/s while the latter has 3.0GB/s. Is that the reason why the Seagate HDD is clicking loudly?

The online seller from whom I bought the Seagate HDD told me that the first HDD they sent to me, which I had replaced with the one I'm using right now, does not have any problems. They're saying that maybe it's my laptop (T61) that has the problem.

Any thoughts, especially from those who are knowledgeable in this area?

Thanks a lot!

[nullnullfzu]

Weeeelll, yes, if you compare a 5 year old 160GB drive with a new one of the same size. Then you might very well be right. In that case... I'm not so sure...