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HDD Head Noise

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  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Storage
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October 6, 2013 6:24:33 PM

Hi All,

I`m seeking some additional advice to a problem i have with my PC at home. As a hardware expert i cannot find the cause of the issue i am having. I`ll start from the beginning.

Recently i rebuilt my pc after upgrading most of the main components. I basically replaced everything but my peripherals, 2 hard drives and the case. I purchased myself the ASUS Crosshair V Formula M/B and am using an AMD FX 8120 CPU on the board. As part of my purchase i bought a new PSU (Antec Truegamer 900Watt) and was up until recently was running crossfire ATI 4780 X2`s GPU`s. i have now replaced the GPU with a single Sapphire 7950OC edition card and everything's been working well. Now my problem all stems from maybe a month ago when i purchased a WD Green 3TB HDD to replace my 2 old HDD`s left in from my previous build. on the drive i created the 6 GPT partitions i need to ensure that my system would not notice a DIR change with the replacement drive and would work as though nothing ever happened. This is when my problem started to occur. Basically when the machine was idle or using even the smallest amount of CPU power the HDD head would click, Kinda like when something is powering up for the first time. Now at first this didn't bother me as i thought it was just normal then it started to gradually get worse. Especially when playing games, the hdd would click and the game i was playing for freeze for one second and then off i`d go again. So i came to the conclusion it was a faulty drive. Given i could not RMA due to needing to get the data off i bought 2 x seagate barracuda 2 tb drives as replacement. These drive`s came in the mail last week and i have placed them back into my case, created my partitions, copied the data off and have gone live as my main storage drives. This is where it gets weird, this issue is still occurring . The random clicking is still present on both drives. I`ve exhausted all options in trying to nail down the issue.

In an effort to give as much troubleshooting information as possible i have tried the following

Tried 4 Pin molex converter to SATA power connector to both drives
Separate SATA power terminals from PSU (Separate SATA Rails on both drives)
Ran Process Monitor from sysinternals which showed 2 processes. System and my AV
Uninstalled my AV to rule out random scanning
Ran AntiMalware Bytes to ensure it wasn't a worm
Ran my AV (BitDefender) no major issues
Changed SATA Cables on both drives
Repositioned HDD`s in my case
RAN Seagate Tools. No issues
Ran Partition Wizard (Tool i used to create partitions)and ran Checkdsk from the software)

i cant recall much more that i`ve done, It`s alot of steps Ive taken to do my testing.

The last thing i was going to try was tethering a separate power supply to the 2 drives external to the main PC and see if the clicking still occurs. Unfortunately i don't have a spare PSU to test with to rule out a potential PSU issue. I wouldn't expect it to be a PSU issue given i ran 2 x 4870X2`s off it. The most power hungry GPU`s i`ve ever encountered but i cant assume that until i find a way to test the PSU.

Does anyone have any other idea`s for me to try. Most people would just deal with it but given i`ve spent of my adult life in IT i know that its not a normal noise to hear from a drive.

I`ve got a report of the inner workings of my pc but given the text is quite long ive yet to find a way to attach it to this post.


EDIT: 10/7/2013 5:46pm

I just remembered i have a spare PSU in the shed so i have dug that out of storage and tethered it to the 2 HDD`s only and connected the wire trick to the ATX plug. I booted up my PC and confirmed the drives where in fact working from the 2nd power supply and they were. I then waited a few minutes and sure enough the clicking noise started again only this time it was worse off that power supply. I tried to come to this post to edit it and the internet would not connect at all using Firefox. I know the internet was working as my wife is using it and my Surface RT is still getting traffic without a problem. I`ve now placed the original SATA Connectors back on the 2 drives and am updating this thread through the original setup. Im at a loss as to whats going on. What else can i test. removing the SATA cables completely? I`d rather not have to rebuild as the machine has been working fine until i installed the 3TB WD Green drive beforehand and its a tedious process that im not keen on doing. I do have an acronis backup of the SSD from before i changed the HDD`s. I guess as a last resort i could go back to that. But then i`ll never know if it resolves this issue and if it does....what caused it.

Any input would be much appreciated



More about : hdd head noise

a b G Storage
October 14, 2013 4:42:32 AM

Hard drive clicking noises are usually an indication that your hard drives are going to die. I would back up all of my data asap.
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