Question How Is My Harddrive Doing?

[Vellaura]

Hey all!

My hardrive on the rare occasion will make rather audible clicking sounds for just a few seconds when i boot up a game like The First Descandant but then stays quiet as I use it. The S.M.A.R.T status shows it as good but I wasn't sure if it was fine or if I should be worried. Here are the values. I'm having a little trouble reading and understanding the specific values.

Thank you

https://imgur.com/a/9qDnpHy

View: https://imgur.com/a/9qDnpHy

 

[CountMike]

Hey all!

My hardrive on the rare occasion will make rather audible clicking sounds for just a few seconds when i boot up a game like The First Descandant but then stays quiet as I use it. The S.M.A.R.T status shows it as good but I wasn't sure if it was fine or if I should be worried. Here are the values. I'm having a little trouble reading and understanding the specific values.

Thank you

https://imgur.com/a/9qDnpHy

View: https://imgur.com/a/9qDnpHy

Good but you may want to lower number of startups to save some wear and tear.

 

[Vellaura]

Good but you may want to lower number of startups to save some wear and tear.

Hey mate! Thank you for the response but what exactly do you mean by lowering startups? How can I do this?

 

[CountMike]

Hey mate! Thank you for the response but what exactly do you mean by lowering startups? How can I do this?

Check your Power Saving Plan in control panel and set disk sleep to Never. That should stop it for needless shutdowns and restarts when they are accessed and windows keep on accessing drives even if you don't. Every time it restarts, heads go flying around several times until they settle on where data was last.

 

[Vellaura]

Check your Power Saving Plan in control panel and set disk sleep to Never. That should stop it for needless shutdowns and restarts when they are accessed and windows keep on accessing drives even if you don't. Every time it restarts, heads go flying around several times until they settle on where data was last.

Thank you, will do!

Is that the value for Start/Stop Count?

 

[CountMike]

Thank you, will do!

Is that the value for Start/Stop Count?

Yes beside those when PC is started which can't be avoided.

 

[Misgar]

My hardrive on the rare occasion will make rather audible clicking sounds for just a few seconds

Let's hope that at 18,357 hours your hard drive isn't starting to suffer the "Click of Death".
https://www.howtogeek.com/832396/what-is-the-click-of-death-in-an-hdd-and-what-should-you-do/

Two years isn't excessive for a hard disk and any clicks you hear may be normal head seeks, but if you've got anything important on the 1TB drive, back it up elsewhere. Better safe than sorry.

 

[Vellaura]

Let's hope that at 18,357 hours your hard drive isn't starting to suffer the "Click of Death".
https://www.howtogeek.com/832396/what-is-the-click-of-death-in-an-hdd-and-what-should-you-do/

Two years isn't excessive for a hard disk and any clicks you hear may be normal head seeks, but if you've got anything important on the 1TB drive, back it up elsewhere. Better safe than sorry.

Yea I was wondering the same thing. I've read around 5 years or more is the average especially if your not doing some constant intensive load stuff. Everything else behaves fine just the clicks got me worried. I back up as often as I can.

Is there such a thing as normal clicks?

Also does the drive or windows have any emergency "your drive is about to die" life support mode where you can't use it other than to get files out?

I remember seeing something like that in a video a long time ago.

 

[USAFRet]

What is your current backup routine?

 

[Misgar]

Also does the drive or windows have any emergency "your drive is about to die" life support mode where you can't use it other than to get files out?

Not really on hard disks. If you're constantly monitoring S.M.A.R.T. you might get an early warning of imminent demise, but it's equally likely the drive could suddenly stop working. I run Hard Disk Sentinel on my machines, but it doesn't provide any 'magic bullet' or 'get out of jail option'.

Some SSDs drop into 'read-only' mode when things start to go bad, but the only sensible way to protect data is to keep multiple copies on different devices/media, with at least one copy held off site.

If your one and only set of family photos disappear "up the proverbial j-plane" i.e. they cease to be real and become imaginary (non-existant), you've only got yourself to blame for the loss.

Is there such a thing as normal clicks?

In a word, "yes". You get to know what's normal and what's not when your first drive suffers the "Click of Death". It might never happen, or you might never hear it, but drives do not last forever.

Yea I was wondering the same thing. I've read around 5 years or more is the average especially if your not doing some constant intensive load stuff.

I have a 6TB drive start to fail in a RAID-Z2 server with only 6-days of use on the counter. I bought the drive brand new but that didn't stop it from developing pending bad blocks. The drive was outside its 3-year warranty, so I replaced it with a new drive and re-silvered the array.

Moral of the storey is drives can fail at any time.

However, I do have some server "pulls" (Enterprise class drives) with more than 3-years continuous use, but with a low start/stop count of 60 cycles according to HD Sentinel. In comparison, your drive has a power on count of 2800, so potentially it's been stressed more.

 

[Vellaura]

What is your current backup routine?

I have a 1tb external hard drive I put my files on . Should I be aware of other methods?

 

[Vellaura]

Not really on hard disks. If you're constantly monitoring S.M.A.R.T. you might get an early warning of imminent demise, but it's equally likely the drive could suddenly stop working. I run Hard Disk Sentinel on my machines, but it doesn't provide any 'magic bullet' or 'get out of jail option'.

Some SSDs drop into 'read-only' mode when things start to go bad, but the only sensible way to protect data is to keep multiple copies on different devices/media, with at least one copy held off site.

If your one and only set of family photos disappear "up the proverbial j-plane" i.e. they cease to be real and become imaginary (non-existant), you've only got yourself to blame for the loss.


In a word, "yes". You get to know what's normal and what's not when your first drive suffers the "Click of Death". It might never happen, or you might never hear it, but drives do not last forever.


I have a 6TB drive start to fail in a RAID-Z2 server with only 6-days of use on the counter. I bought the drive brand new but that didn't stop it from developing pending bad blocks. The drive was outside its 3-year warranty, so I replaced it with a new drive and re-silvered the array.

Moral of the storey is drives can fail at any time.

However, I do have some server "pulls" (Enterprise class drives) with more than 3-years continuous use, but with a low start/stop count of 60 cycles according to HD Sentinel. In comparison, your drive has a power on count of 2800, so potentially it's been stressed more.so.

So ultimately it's just the luck of the draw.

 

[Vellaura]

Small update:

It appears to be more of a 'scraping' sound. Not a click. Kind of like when your grating a carrot but more harddrivey. Actually maybe more like coffee beans being grinded. not consistently though, 1.....2.....3....

And randomlys occurs while im fighting hoards of enemies in The First Descandant.

Could this help discern whats really going on? Maybe its just reading, audibly?

 

[CountMike]

Small update:

It appears to be more of a 'scraping' sound. Not a click. Kind of like when your grating a carrot but more harddrivey. Actually maybe more like coffee beans being grinded. not consistently though, 1.....2.....3....

And randomlys occurs while im fighting hoards of enemies in The First Descandant.

Could this help discern whats really going on? Maybe its just reading, audibly?

Maybe just awfully fragmented, try defrgging it with optimization and run windows diskcheck.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ion/windows-commands/chkdsk?tabs=event-viewer

Our 12 Favorite Free Defrag Software Tools (November 2024)

Free defrag software will defragment your hard drive and potentially speed up your PC. Here's a list of all the best ones we've used.

www.lifewire.com

Because head is probably running all over the place trying to find files and put then together.

 

[Vellaura]

Maybe just awfully fragmented, try defrgging it with optimization and run windows diskcheck.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ion/windows-commands/chkdsk?tabs=event-viewer

Our 12 Favorite Free Defrag Software Tools (November 2024)

Free defrag software will defragment your hard drive and potentially speed up your PC. Here's a list of all the best ones we've used.

www.lifewire.com

Because head is probably running all over the place trying to find files and put then together.

This could very likely be the case as I havent defragged the drive since I put the system together around 3-4 years ago . I totally forgot it was even a thing.

How often is one supposed to defrag? Also anything else I can do to help improve the drive?

 

[CountMike]

This could be very likely the case since I havent defragged since I put the system together around 3-4 years ago

How often is one supposed to defrag? Also anything else I can do to help improve the drive?

Windows have option to Optimize/defrag on a schedule, I think that default is every 10 days but it's not full defrag, only file defrag. Once it's fully de-fragmented with optimization, regular windows maintenance should be enough.

 

[Vellaura]

OMG YOU GUYS - I DONT THINK ITS THE HDD AT ALL

So i managed to capture the sound and I dont think its the harddrive at all. I think its just the coil whine coming from my gpu!!! omgggg. I had a closer look and it sounds like its coming closer from the gpu then the harddrive side. As my gpu is at the back and harddrive at the front. Given the nature of the sound I dont think its too ridiculous to assume it was the harddrive.

That would explain why it goes off when I'm playing The First Descandant. Because it uses the most voltage 1.050v.

I'm going to undervolt my card and see how things go with regard to that sound. Before this it was actually on my to do list.

What do you guys think of this sound? Coil whine or something else?

https://imgur.com/a/coil

View: https://imgur.com/a/coil-whine-not-hard-drive-ZBb5qtN