Hard drive failing?

[docbrown]

Hey guys,

I have recently just built a new pc and decided to use my old hard drives (previously raided 2x500gb samsung f1's) as storage drives.

I managed to format via "diskpart" command prompt as windows was not recognising. I am now getting some strange sounds coming from the drive, even when totally clean and not in use.

The disk used to make this sound when shutting down in old machine, 2 clicks and then shut down.

I had no problems with the disk in raid and a little confused at why its suddenly going crazy.

Here is a video of the sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT96-APwIrM

Thank you!

[Agent]

It's known as 'the click of death'
Check your power and sata (unlikely) cables, but otherwise it's almost certainly dead.

[kompukare]

While click of death is always possible (never trust HDDs), if it used to make that sound when shutting down (presumably parking its heads first), is it possible that on the new machine the drives are going into a power saving mode which was disabled on the old machine?

Still, treat the drives like will fail. Oh, and try to run a SMART tool. Either official Samsung ones or gSMARTcontrol.

[Agent]

Power saving mode wouldn't cause constant clicking like that in a million years. The firmware would stop any such actions.

That's the heads not being able to seek properly, for whatever reason.

[docbrown]

Thx for the replys guys

I have now installed the other samsung f1, and this is doing exactly the same thing.
Getting really confused at this stage, someone mentioned it might be an indexing problem, but I dont even know where to start with that.

I downloaded seagate tools and the drive is perfect.

[Agent]

Give us a bit more to go on...specs of the system, power supply, do the drives work in other machines?, how to you have them setup / connected and so on....

[docbrown]

Microsoft Windows 8.1 64Bit
i5 4690
Radeon R9 280
4gb corsair 1600 vengeance
Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3 Intel Z97
256GB Crucial MX100
GS700 - power supply

The drives were working perfect in previous build in Raid 0, no problems what so ever.
Both drives have formatted perfectly fine and no errors using seagate tools.

The SSD is my main windows/games drive and the samsung f1's were to be used as storage.
All connected via sata on the mother board.

I have checked the bios and it is showing as AHCI mode if that helps at all?

Also - previous system was XP

Thank you

[Agent]

Unplug your OS/ SSD - the system won't boot, thats fine. Do the disks click / have the same sound? If so, this suggests something pre-OS. If not, it could be OS related. Do they click like this at the BIOS stage?

An easy check is to boot off a live Linux disk and see if you get the issue there.

Try the drives on different power connections, just in case there is something wrong with the cable.

[MrRockliffe]

My Seagate drive clicks when shutting down - always has. Assumed it was normal?

[docbrown]

My Seagate drive clicks when shutting down - always has. Assumed it was normal?

Yeah mine used to do this in old build - 2 clicks, one per drive as they reseat i guess.

[MrRockliffe]

Weird thing is, my Western digital drive doesn't, nor has any other drive I've owned. My Seagate external drive doesn't either. Really strange.

[docbrown]

Unplug your OS/ SSD - the system won't boot, thats fine. Do the disks click / have the same sound? If so, this suggests something pre-OS. If not, it could be OS related. Do they click like this at the BIOS stage?

An easy check is to boot off a live Linux disk and see if you get the issue there.

Try the drives on different power connections, just in case there is something wrong with the cable.

I unplugged the ssd and left one samsung f1 plugged in, no crazy sounds.

The only time its done it at the bios stage is when I have restarted from windows to try to get it to stop.

With this being an older sata HDD will the AHCI be causing it any problems?

[Agent]

AHCI shouldn't cause any issues, it's just the interface it uses. You can however normally always drop it into IDE mode.

So unplugging the SSD stops the clicking?
That's a pretty weird situation if so. Did you try moving the drives to a different power cables (on separate branches from the PSU)?

[peterb]

Sounding (sorry - no pun intended) like a power issue. The clicking is similar to that I have had from a hard drive mounted in a USB powered enclosure. As agent says above, try a different power source, and check the connections in the power lead chain.

[docbrown]

I have removed it from the same power lead as the ssd, turned off power saving in windows and also re-ordered which sata connectors each drive is connected to on the motherboard. Thankfully all seems well thus far but keeping my fingers crossed

Thank you all for the help

[PlayerAsleep]

Ive had drives last for years clicking away like mad. Just because it might, doesn't mean it will