Is this the sound of a hard drive problem (listen to clip)?

[Petros_k]

Is this the sound of a hard drive problem (listen to clip)?

http://k007.kiwi6.com/hotlink/x3i5hbq810/Hard_Drive_Noise.mp3

You will hear the sound of the fans humming and there's a clicking and buzzing sound that's coming from the hard drive. You may have to turn up the volume.

This is a used hard drive made by Seagate (Barracuda ES.2), model ST3250310NS, but it's a Dell OEM part. I noticed that the drive makes this noise when the system is turned on and it continues for an hour or longer. I am using Windows 7 but have turned off Search, SearchIndexer, Task Scheduler, and Event log to rule out these services reading or writing to the drive. I also know a process like defrag is not running in the background. The computer is typically idle when the sound is made, but it does stop at some point in the day.

The hard drive has been defragmented (it's only 25% used), and Windows Disc Check tool turned up no errors.

 

[Petros_k]

I ran HD Tune to see if it detected a problem. Here's the results:

It also found no damaged blocks when I ran the error scan.

Does the graph from the Benchmark test look normal?

 

[Dahak]

Giving the size and age of the drive it does not sound normal although sometimes the enterprise drives tend to sound different.

it could be a sign that it is possible that it will fail, but it could still run for 5 year more, hard to say.
If that sound was not there normally, and you want to be on the safe side, I would make sure I would have backups just in case or for the inexpense of a new drive, just replace it for the piece of mind

Dont have to go to fancy, something like this this or this

You could go smaller than a 500gb but they are usually not that much cheaper

 

[CuriousMike]

Is this the sound of a hard drive problem (listen to clip)?

That sounds an awful lot like a "clunk clunk."
Hard drives are pretty cheap - can you replace it with a new disk?

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

 

[Petros_k]

The point here is whether or not the sound is normal or does the sound indicate something faulty.

Is it the sound of a hard drive that is ready to fail? I posted the HD Tune results in case there might be a clue there.

 

[jolancer]

i assume you won't be able to get a concise answer about the noise unless its obviously defective. however to get any worth while opinion at all i also assume your going to have to do a much better job recoding the noise.. to me it sounds like an AC running with someone using a stapler in a city apartment during daytime trafic? if you decide its worth while for you to try and record the noise, may want to temporarily unplug all your case fans and record HDD only, near the case. granted CPU and PSU fans will still be heard if they are noisy also.

long time ago i had a system put together from cheap parts, but i used a aftermarket HSF and fan controller, and i must say in that setup the noisest component was the 3.5" HDD. however it didn't make clicking noises after boot up was complete unless busy with a task. If you ebay machine came pre setup with win7, perhaps they just have malware or something installed which is doing shit in the background with your hdd? is the clicking noise still there if win7 isn't loaded? like when you boot seatools? or just idling in bios perhaps? could boot from a linux live distro for testing aswell. ...also ~%25 used of a 250GB drive? did it come like that or you put shit on it? ..if you didn't put all that on there, may also want to check windows restore (aka. volume shadow copy backup service) and check/set your page file to a static size. ..assuming you dont just reformat or throw it out after later tests

that said, since smart shows a high Hour run count and low power Cycle count. also the fact its an old 250GB HDD, its definitly old and recycled. I don't know if those counts indicate perhaps its a retired server drive.

i don't know what the smart status means, i never needed to look into its specific values. but heres one of mine if your curious for compairison. this was from the smartctl command from linux SystemRescueCd, but any distro probably would work.

info
$ smartctl -a /dev/sda

short test
$ smartctl -t short /dev/sda

more info
$ man smartctl (note 'man' is manual for any cmd used)

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Always       -       1176
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1295
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       3631
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0033   125   100   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1291
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       112
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   094   094   000    Old_age   Always       -       64243
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       32 (Min/Max 5/47)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
220 Disk_Shift              0x0002   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       96
222 Loaded_Hours            0x0032   094   094   000    Old_age   Always       -       2626
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
224 Load_Friction           0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
226 Load-in_Time            0x0026   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       329
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0001   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

 

[Petros_k]

...your going to have to do a much better job recoding the noise.. to me it sounds like an AC running with someone using a stapler in a city apartment during daytime trafic?

Fair enough, but is the clicking sound you say sounds like a stapler anything like what a hard drive should sound like for over an hour? You can hear there's a buzzing and then a click repeating.

If you ebay machine came pre setup with win7, perhaps they just have malware or something installed which is doing shit in the background with your hdd?

Both Malwarebytes and Avast indicate no malware or virus.

is the clicking noise still there if win7 isn't loaded? like when you boot seatools? or just idling in bios perhaps?

Interestingly no, and that's why I disabled some Windows services that could be running in the background reading or writing to the hard drive (mentioned above).

...may also want to check windows restore (aka. volume shadow copy backup service) and check/set your page file to a static size

You mean disable System Restore to see if that's what's causing the hard drive activity? I think I would see this running when I go to the Task Manager, yes? I don't see it running. And I actually did already set the page file to 2 GB already rather than have Windows manage the size. I also tried to disable it and see if the clicking stopped, but it didn't.


What I'm wondering now is this: If I've got a Dell OEM part (i.e., the hard drive made by Seagate) that has Dell firmware (and I know this is the case), maybe the problem is the firmware is not really compatible with the HP motherboard, and even though it works there's a glitch that the diagnostics can't pick up but that is causing the hard drive to not work properly.

 

[silicon]

The point here is whether or not the sound is normal or does the sound indicate something faulty.

Is it the sound of a hard drive that is ready to fail? I posted the HD Tune results in case there might be a clue there.

I suppose the first thing is to back up all data and image the OS if possible to another drive. its difficult to tell what the noise is in your clip but, in general, a clunking or sharp click is the sound of doom for the drive. replace this drive as soon as possible to avoid problems.

 

[Petros_k]

I just ran a DPS Self-Test through the BIOS. It gave me a completion code 0, "All tests passed."

 

[Petros_k]

I just saw something else today. I'm running Avast anti-virus. In the control panel under Setting > Troubleshooting I had left the default check under "Enable rootkit scan at system startup." Could it be that this was scanning in the background --and would a rootkit scan run for over an hour running in the background? If I run a rootkit scan with Avast at boot it only takes 30 minutes. In checking for processes running in the background making the hard drive noise I wouldn't have stopped Avast from running because, well, because it obviously needs to run to protect my system. But if this is something that runs automatically every time you re-start the system, if enabled, is that what it might be?

Listen to the sound clip above again. Is that what it might sound like if Avast is doing a rootkit scan?

 

[Petros_k]

I completely disabled Avast (including startup) and the noise persisted, so the activity is definitely not related.

Update:

The seller is sending to me another hard drive (used no doubt) to see if the problem persists.

As per their policy, the replacement hard drive has another image of Windows 7 pre-installed. What I was wondering is: Can't I just install the new hard drive on the other SATA connection and clone the existing hard drive? I've had 3 weeks of file transfers, program installations, and various tweaks now invested and I really don't want to start from scratch.

Any reason that I might not want to use a free program like Clonezilla or Macrium Reflect to do this?

 

[Petros_k]

Here's something interesting I didn't know.

This is from the manual for a different Seagate hard drive ( ES.2 SAS ) :

"7.5 Media Pre-Scan
Media Pre-Scan is a feature that allows the drive to repair media errors that would otherwise have been found by the host system during critical data accesses early in the drive’s life. The default setting for Media Pre-Scan is enabled on standard products...

*During Pre-Scan write verify commands, write performance may decrease by 50% until Pre-Scan completes. Write performance testing should be performed after Pre-Scan is complete. This may be checked by reading the BMS status. To expedite the scan of the full pack and subsequently exit from the Pre-Scan period, BMS will begin scanning immediately when the drive goes to idle during the Pre-Scan period. In the event that the drive is in a high transaction traffic environment and is unable to complete a BMS scan within 24 power on hours BMS will dis-able Pre-Scan to restore full performance to the system.


7.6 Deferred Auto-Reallocation
Deferred Auto-Reallocation (DAR) simplifies reallocation algorithms at the system level by allowing the drive to reallocate unreadable locations on a subsequent write command. Sites are marked for DAR during read operations performed by the drive. When a write command is received for an LBA marked for DAR, the auto-reallocation process is invoked and attempts to rewrite the data to the original location. If a verification of this rewrite fails, the sector is remapped to a spare location. This is in contrast to the system having to use the Reassign Command to reassign a location that was unreadable and then generate a write command to rewrite the data. DAR is most effective when AWRE and ARRE are enabled—this is the default setting from the Seagate factory. With AWRE and ARRE disabled DAR is unable to reallocate the failing location and will report an error sense code indicating that a write command is being attempted to a previously failing location.

7.7 Idle Read After Write
Idle Read After Write (IRAW) utilizes idle time to verify the integrity of recently written data. During idle periods, no active system requests, the drive reads recently written data from the media and compares it to valid write command data resident in the drives data buffer. Any sectors that fail the comparison result in the invocation of a rewrite and auto-reallocation process. The process attempts to rewrite the data to the original location. If a verification of this rewrite fails, the sector is re-mapped to a spare location."


All the above suggests that a Seagate hard drive would have certain self-tests and diagnostics that routinely run at power on. The question remains though is the sound I'm hearing (check sound clip above) this activity?

However, the manual I have for the Seagate ST3250310NS (the hard drive in question) only says: "During periods of drive idle, some offline activity may occur according to the S.M.A.R.T. specification, which may increase acoustic and power to operational levels."

 

[spat55]

That sounds bad to me but I am no expert...