soft click sound - what is it?

toronado455 · Post by **toronado455** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 7:38 pm

Every once in a while I hear a soft single metallic click sound - like the sound of a coin being dropped on top of another coin from about half an inch above - from my Seagate ST3250823A. Just curious what this could be.

swivelguy2 · Post by **swivelguy2** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:57 pm

It's the read/write head parking and unparking. Read more about it here.

toronado455 · Post by **toronado455** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 11:46 pm

swivelguy2 wrote:It's the read/write head parking and unparking. Read more about it here.

I thought it might be that. Certainly sounds like it. But I don't see an attribute for head parks (attributes ID 192, 193) in the SMART values on this drive in either SpeedFan or Active@ Hard Disk Monitor.

toronado455 · Post by **toronado455** » Thu May 06, 2010 11:08 am

swivelguy2 wrote:It's the read/write head parking and unparking. Read more about it here.

The thing is, I'm hearing this sound even during disc access. Why would the head be parking/unparking while the disc is active?

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Fri May 07, 2010 2:45 pm

Unlikely to be caused by head loading/unloading as Hitachi and WD are the only certain ones using that tech in desktop drives. (Laptop drives use the tech regardless of manufacturer.) Samsung F3 Ecogreen is a big questionmark as the product image shows unload ramps. F1 and F2 Ecogreen are definitely contact-start/stop (CSS) drives. But Seagate? Do they use it? AFAIK, no... unless they've just made a big change in their design, that is. Eventually every HDD manufacturer will start to use it... it's just a question of when "eventually" is.

If it clicks during disk access, it's unlikely to be unload. Unloading takes at least half a second, and reloading takes another half a second. This would cause a 1 second pause for data transfer, and unless you're experiencing such, it's not unloading.

...wait! You said ST3250823A? That's 7200.8, a drive model that's quite old already. 7200.8 absolutely definitely does NOT have unload ramp.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Fri May 07, 2010 4:50 pm

I've owned a few HDDs with this symptom. One IBM and one Seagate I think. Both were returned and replaced.

I would let Seagates diagnostic program (I think it's included on the Ultimate Boot CD btw) test the drive too see if it returns an error code. And if so return it if you still have warranty. And backup all sensitive data either way.