[SOLVED] HDD Light Blinking & Making Noise

[indianafanatic]

I've just buildt a pc and am noticing a repetitive noise coming from, or associated with, the hdd notification light on the case - about every 3 seconds. The noise and light occur at the same time, so I don't know which is causing the other. I have the os on an nvme m.2 drive and a Seagate 2TB hdd attached, as well, for mas storage.

HDD Light & Sound

Because I am new to this, I am unsure as to what my next step should be in troubleshooting and correcting the issue. Anyone here familiar with it or run into the same issue?

FOLLOW UP: I've determined the cause to be associated with the HDD, after the noise going away after unplugging it, and it coming back after reconnecting it. I've written to that drive before, but didn't experience the noise. Until I find out what is causing it, and how to correct it, I will just leave it unplugged until I need to use it...

 

[Grobe]

I'm not able to watch your video. Maybe you can upload to youtube instead?

Anyway - the hdd and the cabinet may sometimes get into mechanical resonance that tends to amplify vibrations.

Also - please post S.M.A.R.T. data for the hdd, then it should be possible to tell if it seems to be in working order or have some problems. You can use crystaldiskinfo for that (copy text from the program and paste it here as text/code).

 

[indianafanatic]

I'm not able to watch your video. Maybe you can upload to youtube instead?

Anyway - the hdd and the cabinet may sometimes get into mechanical resonance that tends to amplify vibrations.

Also - please post S.M.A.R.T. data for the hdd, then it should be possible to tell if it seems to be in working order or have some problems. You can use crystaldiskinfo for that (copy text from the program and paste it here as text/code).

Thank you very much for your reply! I've uploaded the video to YouTube:

View: https://youtu.be/GDK8uEroC80

(The audio is a bit faint, but the 'chirp' sounds much louder in person)

As soon as the Crystaldisk test is done, I will upload the reults...

 

[indianafanatic]

Also - please post S.M.A.R.T. data for the hdd, then it should be possible to tell if it seems to be in working order or have some problems. You can use crystaldiskinfo for that (copy text from the program and paste it here as text/code).

Okay, I hope that this is the information you're looking for. If not, please tell me
(As a related note, the light and noise didn't occur during the test and hasn't started again after it...)


* DiskCheckup V3.4 Build: 1003 Report *

SysInfo DLL Version: SysInfo v1.0 Build: 1122
Time of export: 20:50:12 21-Jul-2020

Device information:
Device ID: 0
Interface: SATA
Device Capacity: 1907726 MB
Serial Number: ZK200WNF
Model Number: ST2000DM008-2FR102
Firmware Revision: 0001
Partitions:
S: 1907711 MB

ATA information:

Disk geometry:
Cylinders: 243201
Tracks/Cylinder: 255
Sectors/Track: 63
Bytes/Sector: 512
Total disk sectors: 3907029168
Logical sector size: 512
Physical sector size: 4096
Media rotation rate: 7200 RPM
Buffer size: N/A
ECC size: N/A

Standards compliance:
ATA8-ACS Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-7 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-6 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-5 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-4 Supported: Yes
SATA Compliance: Yes
SATA Gen3 Signaling Speed (6.0Gb/s) Supported: Yes
SATA Gen2 Signaling Speed (3.0Gb/s) supported: Yes
SATA Gen1 Signaling Speed (1.5Gb/s) supported: Yes
Transport Type: Serial
SATA 3.0 Transport Compilance: Yes
SATA 2.6 Transport Compilance: Yes
SATA 2.5 Transport Compilance: Yes
SATA II: Ext Transport Compilance: Yes
SATA 1.0a Transport Compilance: Yes
ATA8-AST Transport Compilance: Yes
World Wide ID: 5000C500C61E1C7D

Feature support:
SMART supported: Yes
SMART enabled: Yes
SMART self-test supported: Yes
SMART error log supported: Yes
LBA supported: Yes
IORDY supported: Yes
CFast supported: No
DMA supported: Yes
Maximum Multiword DMA mode supported: 2
Multiword DMA selected: None
Maximum UltraDMA mode supported: 6
UltraDMA selected: 6
Maximum PIO mode supported: 4
SATA Compliance: Yes
NCQ priority information supported: No
Unload while NCQ commands are outstanding supported: No
Phy Event Counters supported: Yes
Receipt of power management requests supported: Yes
NCQ feature set supported: Yes
Software Settings Preservation: Supported, Enabled
In-order data delivery: Not supported
Initiating power management: Supported, Disabled
DMA Setup auto-activation: Supported, Disabled
Non-zero buffer offsets: Not supported
Trusted Computing supported: No
Host Protected Area (HPA) supported: Yes
Read look-ahead supported: Yes
Read look-ahead enabled: Yes
Write cache supported: Yes
Write cache enabled: Yes
Power management supported: Yes
Security mode supported: Yes
Security mode enabled: No
Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) supported: No
48bit Addressing supported: Yes
Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) supported: No
Power-up in Standby (PUIS) supported: Yes
Power-up in Standby (PUIS) enabled: No
Advanced Power Management (APM) supported: Yes
Advanced Power Management (APM) enabled: Yes
Current APM level: Minimum power consumption without Standby
CompactFlash Association (CFA) supported: No
General Purpose Logging (GPL) supported: Yes
Streaming supported: No
Media card pass through supported: No
Extended power conditions supported: No
Extended status reporting supported: Yes
Extended status reporting enabled: No
Write-read-verify supported: Yes
Write-read-verify enabled: No
Free-fall control supported: No
TRIM command supported: Yes
SCT command transport supported: Yes
NV Cache enabled: No
NV Cache Power Management supported: No

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Status Value Worst Threshold Raw Value TEC
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate OK 81 75 6 126896640 N/A
3 Spin Up Time OK 98 98 0 0 N/A
4 Start/Stop Count OK 100 100 20 71 N/A
5 Reallocated Sector Count OK 100 100 10 0 N/A
7 Seek Error Rate OK 100 253 45 88541 N/A
9 Power On Time OK 100 100 0 240342074916948 N/A
10 Spin Retry Count OK 100 100 97 0 N/A
12 Power Cycle Count OK 100 100 20 7 N/A
183 SATA Downshift Error Count OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
184 End-to-End error OK 100 100 99 0 N/A
187 Reported Uncorrectable Errors OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
188 Command Timeout OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
189 High Fly Writes OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
190 Temperature Difference from 100 OK 71 68 40 504823837 N/A
191 G-sense Error Rate OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
192 Power off Retract Count OK 100 100 0 1 N/A
193 Load Cycle Count OK 98 98 0 4692 N/A
194 Temperature OK 29 40 0 29 C N/A
195 Hardware ECC Recovered OK 81 75 0 126896640 N/A
197 Current Pending Sector Count OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
198 Uncorrectable Sector Count OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count OK 200 200 0 0 N/A
240 Head flying hours OK 100 253 0 133405979181059 N/A
241 Total LBAs Written OK 100 253 0 95621131 N/A
242 Total LBAs Read OK 100 253 0 31275509 N/A

 

[Grobe]

Well - the sound, it doesn't look good to me. But at the same time, I cannot find any obviously bad recordings from the s.m.a.r.t data either.

To further try to establish the root cause, please answer this questions:

• Does the sound goes all the time, or only when OS is running ?
• Can you try swap SATA port on the mainboard. Is it the same problem?
• Can you try to swap sata cable ?
• Can you access and use the disk as normal from within windows ?
• Does the same happens if you connect the hdd to another computer ?

 

[Zerk2012]

If it's just 2 clicks it's normal of the drive starting and stopping, the led indicates the drive started and stoped.

 

[indianafanatic]

@Grobe ,

A1: The sound remains while the computer is on, regardless of current activity.
A2: I swapped cable to SATA Port #1 and the sound has subsided, for the most part, but it returned 20 minutes later (after starting MSI Dragon Center). I also swapped the SATA cable and the noise/light instance returned again after trying MSI Dragon Center again.

At this point, my belief that something in the Dragon Center is causing the constant disk read, and I will need to troubleshoot it with MSI, I think.

 

[Grobe]

At this point, my belief that something in the Dragon Center is causing the constant disk read, and I will need to troubleshoot it with MSI, I think.

Well - if you uninstall the Dragon Center and if the issue goes away and not returs, you've found the cause.