Problem with hard drive clicking

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Revision as of 07:34, 29 May 2006 by Hmh (Talk | contribs) (Add a possible cause (-B mode, BIOS resets it often) and detection method (smartctl -A))
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Many users have reported a problem with hard drive clicking, particularly with Hitachi's 5k80 series which currently ships with new T series Thinkpads. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle. Some users report that defragmenting their drive helps. Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level, and/or set power management settings.

Some other users report that nothing they try has solved the clicking problem. It is not known whether the problem is a sign of impending drive failure. Since the problem is so prevalent, if it turns out to coincide with high drive failure rates then Hitachi has another major drive quality problem to deal with, after the Deskstar 75GXP problem.

IBM's latest posted firmware, A5DA, does not appear to solve the problem.

Possible cause

Laptop drives (especially Hitachi 5K80, 5K100) can unload heads very often, and they can produce a noticeable click when doing that. 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.

Tracking down the cause of the clicks

Using "smartctl -A", 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.

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. Try turning off power management for the drive; that should stop the drive from parking the heads except when turning off: 

# hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda

You can also try 

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/hda

which doesn't turn power management off, but is the least agressive setting. So far, that has solved my problem with the disk clicking on my G41, with a HTS548080M9AT00 drive. That, I presume, is an Hitachi. Update: I now use -B 255. The clicking seemed to return in some circumstances with 254.

Another Possible Solution

IBM, when notified about this occurance, may replace the drive with a Fujitsu 5k 80GB hard drive, as to them the sound is indicative of a potential hard drive failure.

External links

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