Difference between revisions of "Problem with hard drive clicking"
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| − | Many users have reported a '''problem with hard drive clicking''', sometimes described as a repeating '''tick tick tick''' type of ticking sound | + | Many users have reported a '''problem with hard drive clicking''', sometimes described as a repeating '''tick tick tick''' type of ticking sound, or a '''faint beep''' at random intervals. |
| − | |||
| − | The | + | The [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K80]] series, which shipped with many T series Thinkpads, is reported to suffer from this problem in particular. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. While in use in a quiet environment, the clicks can be relatively loud and annoying. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle and the power has been on for a significant period of time. The clicking is also reported on other vendors' laptop hard drives, and is therefore almost certainly hard drive related rather than laptop chassis related. |
| − | + | The clicking sound appears to occur only when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking. Launching programs that access the hard drive, such as searching or defragmenting the drive, helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive, such as through a full power-off reboot of the system, stops the ticking for the moment. <tt>hdparm</tt> can be used to reset the drive without rebooting, or to set the power management settings. | |
| − | + | Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level. | |
| − | + | === Possible cause and speculation === | |
| − | + | Laptop drives (especially Hitachi [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K80]], [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K100]] and SAMSUNG MP0804H) can '''unload heads''' very often, producing a noticeable click. Some ThinkPad BIOSes can be very eager to program the HD Advanced Power Management feature (<tt>hdparm -B</tt>), even when told to always keep the HD in "Maximum Performance mode", and will do so every time AC state changes and when coming out of suspend (be it S3 or S4). Unless you reset the HD's APM mode, it will unload its heads eventually, thus producing the clicks. | |
| − | + | Another possible cause is the drive firmware running a low level '''surface media check''' periodically during idle time. | |
| − | + | It is not known whether the problem is a sign of impending drive failure. The root cause of the problem is not yet known. It is quite likely to be a normal mode of drive operation. The problem is very prevalent. | |
| − | = | + | Do not confuse this with regular activity. Many daemons poll (config) files every few seconds. Despite files being cached, POSIX compliant filesystems like ext2 or ext3 must update (= write) the last access time. More details and a workaround in [[How to reduce power consumption#Hard_Drives]]. |
| − | Using "'''smartctl -A'''" (part of the the [http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki smartmontools] package), it is possible to check if any of the drive's attributes related to platter spin-up/down or head unload are increasing when a click is heard. | + | === Tracking down the cause of the clicks === |
| − | That can help pinpointing the cause of the clicks. | + | |
| + | Using "'''<tt>smartctl -A</tt>'''" (part of the the <tt>[http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki smartmontools]</tt> package), it is possible to check if any of the drive's attributes related to platter spin-up/down or head unload are increasing when a click is heard. That can help pinpointing the cause of the clicks. | ||
A shell script like this may help: | A shell script like this may help: | ||
| + | |||
<pre>#!/bin/bash | <pre>#!/bin/bash | ||
lastval=0 | lastval=0 | ||
| Line 27: | Line 28: | ||
do | do | ||
newval=`smartctl -A /dev/sda | awk '$2=="Load_Cycle_Count" {print $10}'` | newval=`smartctl -A /dev/sda | awk '$2=="Load_Cycle_Count" {print $10}'` | ||
| − | if [[ $newval != $lastval ]] # i.e. anything has changed (here: load cycle count only) | + | if [[ $newval != $lastval ]] # i.e., anything has changed (here: load cycle count only) |
then | then | ||
date | date | ||
| Line 37: | Line 38: | ||
</pre> | </pre> | ||
| − | + | === Possible solution (Linux) === | |
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | ===Possible solution (Linux)=== | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | + | The clicking noise apparently occurs when the drive is parking its heads (and ramping them off the drive surface in the process) after a timeout after the last disk access. Temporary relief has been found by using '''<tt>hdparm</tt>''' to turn off power management for the drive: | |
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda}} | |
| − | + | That should stop the drive from parking the heads except when turning off. You can also try | |
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 254 /dev/hda}} | |
| − | + | which doesn't turn power management off, but is the least agressive setting: it will still unload heads, but far less often. The drives ''are'' prepared to withstand a great number of head unloads (200,000 unloads are typical, and Hitachi drives tolerate about 600,000 unloads). | |
| − | + | These commands have immediate effect, and need to be reissued at every boot, after resuming from disk or RAM, and after hotswapping. '''You have to reissue the <tt>-B</tt> commands every time the ThinkPad BIOS might have tried to override them.''' In Ubuntu, this can be done by creating an executable file named <tt>00DISK</tt> in <tt>/etc/pm/sleep.d</tt> with the following content (as root): | |
| − | |||
<pre> | <pre> | ||
#!/bin/sh | #!/bin/sh | ||
| − | # Use a less aggressiv hard disk power management in order to | + | # Use a less aggressiv hard disk power management in order to get |
# rid of clicking noise which occurs when the drive is parking its heads | # rid of clicking noise which occurs when the drive is parking its heads | ||
| Line 75: | Line 60: | ||
case "$1" in | case "$1" in | ||
| − | thaw|resume) | + | thaw|resume) |
hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda | hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda | ||
;; | ;; | ||
| Line 85: | Line 70: | ||
</pre> | </pre> | ||
| − | If the above does not help but manually setting hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda does, it helps to add "sleep 2" one | + | If the above does not help, but manually setting <tt>hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda</tt> does, it helps to add "<tt>sleep 2</tt>" one line above <tt>hdparm</tt>. In Ubuntu 8.10 (Linux Mint 6) on a T42, there seems to be something else setting a lower value in battery mode, which might be coming from the BIOS because it clicks during boot and stops with this in place. |
| − | line above hdparm. In Ubuntu 8.10 (Linux Mint 6) on a T42 there seems to be something else setting a lower value | + | |
| − | in battery mode which might be coming from the BIOS because it clicks during boot and stops with this in place. | + | Otherwise, try to reset the drive with <tt>-w</tt>, but note that this may cause data loss, according to <tt>hdparm</tt>'s man page. When used in the following way to stop the clicking, I have not seen any data loss. YMMV. |
| + | |||
| + | # hdparm /dev/hda | ||
| + | # sync | ||
| + | # sleep 5 | ||
| + | # sync | ||
| + | # hdparm -w /dev/hda | ||
| + | |||
| + | === Possible solution (Windows) === | ||
| − | + | On a X41T, do BIOS, firmware and IBM updates. Then simply disable the ShockProtection of the hard drive. On a native X41T Windows installation, it solved the problem; one will hear a click only every hour. It seems that the problem is related to an aggressive setting that will try to park the head often to protect the drive, so the problem is not related with power management settings. Perhaps a similar approach works also under Linux. – WBonX (Hitachi drive) | |
| − | === | + | === Specific models === |
| − | + | ==== Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00) ==== | |
| − | + | On a Thinkpad X41 with a has a 60 GB Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00) hard disk that had the clicking problem (even in Windows), the <tt>hdparm</tt> solution above did not work. The problem was indeed caused by the hard disk unloading the heads when idle, and the <tt>Load_Cycle_Count</tt> SMART statistic could be seen increasing when the clicks occurred. | |
| − | + | <tt>hdparm -B</tt> settings did not seem to help, and a check of the hard drive's specs (available in [http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Travelstar_C4K60 hitachigst.com]) verified that setting the APM mode off (<tt>hdparm -B 255</tt>) would set it actually to the lowest APM mode (the same as <tt>hdparm -B 254</tt>). In this drive, even the lowest APM mode unloads the heads very aggressively, causing the clicking sounds. Another problem is that the drive is rated only for 600,000 unload/load cycles, which means that the drive will break in at most a couple of years. | |
| − | ====Samsung MP0804H 80GB==== | + | {{NOTE|This observation is only about the specific model (Hitachi C4K60), and is not true for more recent Hitachi drives, which do disable APM with <tt>-B 255</tt>.}} |
| + | |||
| + | ==== Samsung MP0804H 80GB ==== | ||
| + | |||
| + | On this drive, the clicking noise can be immediately stopped just by enabling ''automatic offline tests'' using | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{cmdroot|smartctl -o on /dev/hda}} | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
Even more strange is that SMART wasn't enabled by default, although the drive supports it. | Even more strange is that SMART wasn't enabled by default, although the drive supports it. | ||
| − | The drive had already performed 15 | + | The drive had already performed 15,539 load cycles (out of 600,000) within only one week. |
| − | Note that enabling SMART (-s on) without enabling | + | Note that enabling SMART (<tt>-s</tt> on) without enabling offline tests – which is what I did immediately after observing the clicks – did not solve the problem, but made it quite clear that the drive was badly in need of some care. |
| − | ==== Seagate Momentus 7200.1 and 7200.3==== | + | ==== Seagate Momentus 7200.1 and 7200.3 ==== |
| − | |||
| − | On these drives, each click does indeed correspond to an increase in SMART attribute 193, "193 Load_Cycle_Count", as you can see by doing a | + | Reported in X61t and X61 (I have a ST9320421AS). |
| − | + | ||
| + | On these drives, each click does indeed correspond to an increase in SMART attribute 193, "<tt>193 Load_Cycle_Count</tt>", as you can see by doing a | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{cmdroot|smartctl -A /dev/sda}} | ||
before and after a click. | before and after a click. | ||
| − | It seems like the problem is that the default powersaving mode for the drive is one which causes clicking. In fact, executing | + | It seems like the problem is that the default powersaving mode for the drive is one which causes clicking. In fact, executing |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda}} | |
| − | + | ||
| + | which is supposed to turn off power management, actually leaves power management ''on'', and is equivalent to | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda}} | ||
| + | |||
| + | as can be seen by comparing the results of | ||
| − | |||
# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced | # hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced | ||
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced | # hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced | ||
| Line 128: | Line 131: | ||
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced | # hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced | ||
| − | This may or may not be related to something else strange; the drive reports that the | + | This may or may not be related to something else strange; the drive reports that the advanced power management level is 0x8000 more than what you set it to, presumably leading <tt>hdparm</tt> to report that it is always set to "unknown setting" (since the number should be between 1 and 255). FYI, the results of the above sequence of commands are: |
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced}} | |
/dev/sda: | /dev/sda: | ||
| Line 137: | Line 140: | ||
* Advanced Power Management feature set | * Advanced Power Management feature set | ||
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced}} | |
| − | |||
/dev/sda: | /dev/sda: | ||
| Line 145: | Line 147: | ||
* Advanced Power Management feature set | * Advanced Power Management feature set | ||
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced}} | |
| − | |||
/dev/sda: | /dev/sda: | ||
| Line 153: | Line 154: | ||
* Advanced Power Management feature set | * Advanced Power Management feature set | ||
| − | + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced}} | |
| − | |||
/dev/sda: | /dev/sda: | ||
| Line 161: | Line 161: | ||
Advanced Power Management feature set | Advanced Power Management feature set | ||
| + | The workaround seems to be to execute | ||
| + | {{cmdroot|hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda}} | ||
| + | So it seems like the drive is interpreting "<tt>hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda</tt>", which I'm guessing is the default (and which is supposed to be ''not'' powersaving mode) as a request to go into powersaving mode, which causes it to spin down a lot and to and click. And I'm guessing that "<tt>hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda</tt>" actually takes it out of powersaving mode. | ||
| − | + | Somewhat annoying, because | |
| − | |||
| + | {{cmdroot|smartctl -A /dev/sda}} | ||
| − | + | shows that I have already accumulated a <tt>Load_Cycle_Count</tt> 106680 after owning the laptop for just a few weeks! I'm not sure that I understand this stuff, but if this corresponds to "Load/Unload Cycles" in http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus7200.pdf, then that's more than 1/6 of the drive's lifetime! | |
| − | + | I can confirm that after having my drive for about 5 days now, the 193 cycle count is already at 3000, and it's steadily increasing. That is really annoying. Unfortunately, changing the powersave mode on my drive (ST9320421AS) only breaks my hibernate capability (the laptop resumes immediately), but it won't stop the clicking; instead it will increase it. | |
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | + | ===== Firmware upgrade ===== | |
| − | ==== | + | While no firmware update was found direct from IBM/Lenovo, Dell support offers a firmware update for a nearly-identical Seagate drive model. In at least in two cases (model T500, 7200.3; model Z61m 7200.3), the firmware update eliminated the clicking issue. Details available from this <s>[http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=2677&view=by_date_ascending&page=2 Seagate Thread]</s> [http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/CLICKING-NOISE-ISSUE-on-Momentus-7200-3-ST9320421AS-320GB/m-p/12498#M78 Seagate Thread] (version that works, maybe they have restructured their forum) or [http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking here] (for ST9160411ASG). |
| − | + | ==== [http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=HardDrivesOpticalDrives/2.5-inchHardDiskDrives/MK2035GSS/MK2035GSSSpecifications Toshiba MK2035GSS] ==== | |
| − | + | The issue happens with "laptop mode" disabled. BIOS is an "AMIBIOS 8.00.14", and the chipset is "Mobile Intel GM965 Express". | |
| − | + | I can solve the problem with the <tt>hdparm</tt> workaround. The lowest value that makes the trick for me is: | |
| − | + | {{cmdroot|sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda}} | |
| − | |||
| − | ===Firmware upgrades=== | + | === Firmware upgrades === |
| − | There are two HD firmware upgrades on Lenovo's support website. One is specific to X41's, and will upgrade Hitachi's to Release A0L0 | + | There are two HD firmware upgrades on Lenovo's support website. One is specific to X41's, and will upgrade Hitachi's to Release A0L0 (document [http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-67238 MIGR-67238], 2007/01/24). The upgrade comes in three forms: diskette, Windows executable and ISO CD-ROM image. IBM's latest posted firmware, A5DA, does not appear to solve the problem. |
| − | IBM's latest posted firmware, A5DA, does not appear to solve the problem. | ||
| − | A newer upgrade set ([http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-62282 MIGR-62282], 2007/05/02) updates | + | A newer upgrade set ([http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-62282 MIGR-62282], 2007/05/02) updates HD firmwares of several brands, including Hitachi. The patch upgrades firmware for HTC4260xxG9AT00 to A0L2 (according to program output, from 00P3A0B5 to 00P3A0L2). The upgrade comes in a large (20 MB) ISO format, or as several diskettes. There is seemingly no Windows executable; upgrading a diskless machine can therefore be problematic (it involves making a DOS-based USB bootable drive). |
The upgrade caused one X41 Tablet HTC426060G9AT00 drive to stop clicking. | The upgrade caused one X41 Tablet HTC426060G9AT00 drive to stop clicking. | ||
| − | ===Another | + | === Another possible solution === |
IBM, when notified about this occurrence, may replace the drive with a Fujitsu 5k 80GB hard drive, as to them the sound is indicative of a potential hard drive failure. | IBM, when notified about this occurrence, may replace the drive with a Fujitsu 5k 80GB hard drive, as to them the sound is indicative of a potential hard drive failure. | ||
| − | ===Data | + | === Data recovery service === |
| + | |||
| + | In many cases, a software solution would not solve a problem with a clicking hard drive caused by a defective head disk assembly (HDA) or a firmware issue. Consider using an expert data recovery service such as [http://www.WeRecoverData.com WeRecoverData.com]. | ||
| + | |||
| + | == External links == | ||
| − | + | * Ubuntu reported bugs: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695 59695], [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/104535 104535] | |
| + | * [http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Downloads] - The drive feature tool may help with this problem. | ||
| + | * [http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7462 Thread on thinkpads.com] | ||
| + | * [http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=46058 Thread on notebookforums.com] | ||
| + | * [http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?p=143203 Thread on silentpcreview.com] | ||
| + | * [http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15769 Another Thread on thinkpads.com] | ||
| + | * [http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=28538&whichpage=1 Thread on tabletpcbuzz.com] | ||
| + | * [http://thinkpad-forum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2255 German Thread on thinkpad-forum.de (Containing an interesting remark about a possible problem with the Cache)] | ||
| + | * [http://www.werecoverdata.com Data Recovery Service - WeRecoverData.com Data Recovery Labs] | ||
| − | + | [[Category:T40]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:T41]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:T42]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:T43]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:T61]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:T61p]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:X41]] | |
| − | + | [[Category:G41]] | |
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | [[Category: | ||
Revision as of 00:38, 9 August 2010
Many users have reported a problem with hard drive clicking, sometimes described as a repeating tick tick tick type of ticking sound, or a faint beep at random intervals.
The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 series, which shipped with many T series Thinkpads, is reported to suffer from this problem in particular. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. While in use in a quiet environment, the clicks can be relatively loud and annoying. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle and the power has been on for a significant period of time. The clicking is also reported on other vendors' laptop hard drives, and is therefore almost certainly hard drive related rather than laptop chassis related.
The clicking sound appears to occur only when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking. Launching programs that access the hard drive, such as searching or defragmenting the drive, helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive, such as through a full power-off reboot of the system, stops the ticking for the moment. hdparm can be used to reset the drive without rebooting, or to set the power management settings.
Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level.
Contents
Possible cause and speculation
Laptop drives (especially Hitachi Hitachi Travelstar 5K80, Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 and SAMSUNG MP0804H) can unload heads very often, producing a noticeable click. Some ThinkPad BIOSes can be very eager to program the HD Advanced Power Management feature (hdparm -B), even when told to always keep the HD in "Maximum Performance mode", and will do so every time AC state changes and when coming out of suspend (be it S3 or S4). Unless you reset the HD's APM mode, it will unload its heads eventually, thus producing the clicks.
Another possible cause is the drive firmware running a low level surface media check periodically during idle time.
It is not known whether the problem is a sign of impending drive failure. The root cause of the problem is not yet known. It is quite likely to be a normal mode of drive operation. The problem is very prevalent.
Do not confuse this with regular activity. Many daemons poll (config) files every few seconds. Despite files being cached, POSIX compliant filesystems like ext2 or ext3 must update (= write) the last access time. More details and a workaround in How to reduce power consumption#Hard_Drives.
Tracking down the cause of the clicks
Using "smartctl -A" (part of the the smartmontools package), it is possible to check if any of the drive's attributes related to platter spin-up/down or head unload are increasing when a click is heard. That can help pinpointing the cause of the clicks.
A shell script like this may help:
#!/bin/bash
lastval=0
while :
do
newval=`smartctl -A /dev/sda | awk '$2=="Load_Cycle_Count" {print $10}'`
if [[ $newval != $lastval ]] # i.e., anything has changed (here: load cycle count only)
then
date
echo $newval
fi
lastval=$newval
sleep 30 # or some other interval
done
Possible solution (Linux)
The clicking noise apparently occurs when the drive is parking its heads (and ramping them off the drive surface in the process) after a timeout after the last disk access. Temporary relief has been found by using hdparm to turn off power management for the drive:
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda
That should stop the drive from parking the heads except when turning off. You can also try
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/hda
which doesn't turn power management off, but is the least agressive setting: it will still unload heads, but far less often. The drives are prepared to withstand a great number of head unloads (200,000 unloads are typical, and Hitachi drives tolerate about 600,000 unloads).
These commands have immediate effect, and need to be reissued at every boot, after resuming from disk or RAM, and after hotswapping. You have to reissue the -B commands every time the ThinkPad BIOS might have tried to override them. In Ubuntu, this can be done by creating an executable file named 00DISK in /etc/pm/sleep.d with the following content (as root):
#!/bin/sh
# Use a less aggressiv hard disk power management in order to get
# rid of clicking noise which occurs when the drive is parking its heads
. "${PM_FUNCTIONS}"
case "$1" in
thaw|resume)
hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
;;
*)
;;
esac
exit $NA
If the above does not help, but manually setting hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda does, it helps to add "sleep 2" one line above hdparm. In Ubuntu 8.10 (Linux Mint 6) on a T42, there seems to be something else setting a lower value in battery mode, which might be coming from the BIOS because it clicks during boot and stops with this in place.
Otherwise, try to reset the drive with -w, but note that this may cause data loss, according to hdparm's man page. When used in the following way to stop the clicking, I have not seen any data loss. YMMV.
# hdparm /dev/hda # sync # sleep 5 # sync # hdparm -w /dev/hda
Possible solution (Windows)
On a X41T, do BIOS, firmware and IBM updates. Then simply disable the ShockProtection of the hard drive. On a native X41T Windows installation, it solved the problem; one will hear a click only every hour. It seems that the problem is related to an aggressive setting that will try to park the head often to protect the drive, so the problem is not related with power management settings. Perhaps a similar approach works also under Linux. – WBonX (Hitachi drive)
Specific models
Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00)
On a Thinkpad X41 with a has a 60 GB Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00) hard disk that had the clicking problem (even in Windows), the hdparm solution above did not work. The problem was indeed caused by the hard disk unloading the heads when idle, and the Load_Cycle_Count SMART statistic could be seen increasing when the clicks occurred.
hdparm -B settings did not seem to help, and a check of the hard drive's specs (available in hitachigst.com) verified that setting the APM mode off (hdparm -B 255) would set it actually to the lowest APM mode (the same as hdparm -B 254). In this drive, even the lowest APM mode unloads the heads very aggressively, causing the clicking sounds. Another problem is that the drive is rated only for 600,000 unload/load cycles, which means that the drive will break in at most a couple of years.
Samsung MP0804H 80GB
On this drive, the clicking noise can be immediately stopped just by enabling automatic offline tests using
# smartctl -o on /dev/hda
Even more strange is that SMART wasn't enabled by default, although the drive supports it.
The drive had already performed 15,539 load cycles (out of 600,000) within only one week.
Note that enabling SMART (-s on) without enabling offline tests – which is what I did immediately after observing the clicks – did not solve the problem, but made it quite clear that the drive was badly in need of some care.
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 and 7200.3
Reported in X61t and X61 (I have a ST9320421AS).
On these drives, each click does indeed correspond to an increase in SMART attribute 193, "193 Load_Cycle_Count", as you can see by doing a
# smartctl -A /dev/sda
before and after a click.
It seems like the problem is that the default powersaving mode for the drive is one which causes clicking. In fact, executing
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
which is supposed to turn off power management, actually leaves power management on, and is equivalent to
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda
as can be seen by comparing the results of
# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced # hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced # hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced # hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
This may or may not be related to something else strange; the drive reports that the advanced power management level is 0x8000 more than what you set it to, presumably leading hdparm to report that it is always set to "unknown setting" (since the number should be between 1 and 255). FYI, the results of the above sequence of commands are:
# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x01 (1)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8001)
* Advanced Power Management feature set
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x80 (128)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8080)
* Advanced Power Management feature set
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x80fe)
* Advanced Power Management feature set
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8080)
Advanced Power Management feature set
The workaround seems to be to execute
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
So it seems like the drive is interpreting "hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda", which I'm guessing is the default (and which is supposed to be not powersaving mode) as a request to go into powersaving mode, which causes it to spin down a lot and to and click. And I'm guessing that "hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda" actually takes it out of powersaving mode.
Somewhat annoying, because
# smartctl -A /dev/sda
shows that I have already accumulated a Load_Cycle_Count 106680 after owning the laptop for just a few weeks! I'm not sure that I understand this stuff, but if this corresponds to "Load/Unload Cycles" in http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus7200.pdf, then that's more than 1/6 of the drive's lifetime!
I can confirm that after having my drive for about 5 days now, the 193 cycle count is already at 3000, and it's steadily increasing. That is really annoying. Unfortunately, changing the powersave mode on my drive (ST9320421AS) only breaks my hibernate capability (the laptop resumes immediately), but it won't stop the clicking; instead it will increase it.
Firmware upgrade
While no firmware update was found direct from IBM/Lenovo, Dell support offers a firmware update for a nearly-identical Seagate drive model. In at least in two cases (model T500, 7200.3; model Z61m 7200.3), the firmware update eliminated the clicking issue. Details available from this Seagate Thread Seagate Thread (version that works, maybe they have restructured their forum) or here (for ST9160411ASG).
Toshiba MK2035GSS
The issue happens with "laptop mode" disabled. BIOS is an "AMIBIOS 8.00.14", and the chipset is "Mobile Intel GM965 Express".
I can solve the problem with the hdparm workaround. The lowest value that makes the trick for me is:
# sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda
Firmware upgrades
There are two HD firmware upgrades on Lenovo's support website. One is specific to X41's, and will upgrade Hitachi's to Release A0L0 (document MIGR-67238, 2007/01/24). The upgrade comes in three forms: diskette, Windows executable and ISO CD-ROM image. IBM's latest posted firmware, A5DA, does not appear to solve the problem.
A newer upgrade set (MIGR-62282, 2007/05/02) updates HD firmwares of several brands, including Hitachi. The patch upgrades firmware for HTC4260xxG9AT00 to A0L2 (according to program output, from 00P3A0B5 to 00P3A0L2). The upgrade comes in a large (20 MB) ISO format, or as several diskettes. There is seemingly no Windows executable; upgrading a diskless machine can therefore be problematic (it involves making a DOS-based USB bootable drive).
The upgrade caused one X41 Tablet HTC426060G9AT00 drive to stop clicking.
Another possible solution
IBM, when notified about this occurrence, may replace the drive with a Fujitsu 5k 80GB hard drive, as to them the sound is indicative of a potential hard drive failure.
Data recovery service
In many cases, a software solution would not solve a problem with a clicking hard drive caused by a defective head disk assembly (HDA) or a firmware issue. Consider using an expert data recovery service such as WeRecoverData.com.
External links
- Ubuntu reported bugs: 59695, 104535
- Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Downloads - The drive feature tool may help with this problem.
- Thread on thinkpads.com
- Thread on notebookforums.com
- Thread on silentpcreview.com
- Another Thread on thinkpads.com
- Thread on tabletpcbuzz.com
- German Thread on thinkpad-forum.de (Containing an interesting remark about a possible problem with the Cache)
- Data Recovery Service - WeRecoverData.com Data Recovery Labs
