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Harddisk makes a ticking sound

Last response: in Storage
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A couple of weeks ago I bought a completely new system, everything worked perfectly untill a week ago.
The Hitachi Deskstar Sata hdd that I bought began making a loud ticking sound.

At first I was only irritated by the noise, but when the ticking became more intense the system froze again and again. I was already looking for a replacement hdd but I tried one last thing. I reinstalled Windows and the ticking sound disappeared, however when I turned on the computer 10 minutes ago it started again.

I wanted to make a vid to post here but after rebooting the computer the ticking sound has disappeared again.

What is causing the ticking sound?? I know it would be best to buy a new one but as a student I don't have a lot of money to spend. So I want to make sure it's really fubar before replacing it (and no, I'm not going to smash it with a hammer to make sure ;)  )

And if a replacement is needed, what sata hdd would you guys suggest I should buy?

Thanks for the help

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Storage Expert

Assuming you've loaded the latest chipset drivers and have verified the sata cable is properly connected.

Ticking sound. OS freezing.

Those sounds are usually the beginning of a hard drive completely failing. IMO, definitely snag a new hard drive soon and make a back up of any critical data ASAP.

I have had tremendous success with Western Digital and highly recommend them.

Good luck!
Storage Authority

Yep. Hard drive ticking = soon to fail drive.
But!!! Before you completely give up on it, make sure it is not a cable.
I had what I thought was a bad drive doing the same thing, only to get a new drive, and in a week or so the same ticking on the new drive.
Turns out, the SATA cables I were using were the kind that were very "stiff", and they would not stay plugged into the motherboard securely. Although I had suspected at one time they might the problem, and tried several ways to make sure they stayed in place, but eventually the ticking drive would come back every few days or weeks. I finally got some that were way "softer" and more flexible. They also seem to "snap" into the connnectors much more securely than the old cables I had, and presto, no more ticking on the new drive or my old drives.
All is working fine now for over a year.
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hmm that could be it, but I did a smart scan with speedfan and the hdd fitness had dropped 2 blocks since the ticking started..

But I'm going to replace the cable to be sure that is not it.

If the frequency and loudness of these ticks is increasing then what you have is a head crash. The ticking sound is the head hitting the platter.

If you haven't already backed up your data you really need to do it now and avoid using the drive in the meantime.

The cable swap is worth a try but backup your data first and foremost!

Ticking may be a symptom of bad sectors. You can push them back by running the manufacturer's diagnostics. If it fails the manufacturer's diagnostics, send it back or get a new one.

Quote:
Quote from speedfan SMART:

NOTE : your hard disk has 133 pending sectors (this value is very large and your hard disk should be replaced). Those are sectors that couldn't be properly read and that the hard disk logic is waiting for a write operation to try to remap to a spare sector (if available). According to the Reallocated Sector Count attribute, your hard disk seems to have available spare sectors. A simple disk surface scan won't be enough to force the remap operation. You need a read/write surface scan to remap the sector. The best option should be a tool that knows about what should be read from that sector so that it has some option to apply the best fix to the missing data.



that doesn't sound well.... I'm going to replace it asap because I think its already leaking away data as we speak.. My keyboard wasn't recognized correctly when I plugged it in 10 seconds ago.. :S
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