# Soft clicking HDD issue



## Doorways (Mar 23, 2014)

Hi,  I have an issue with my internal HDD. It's a Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 and is prone to a soft clicking noise. This click tends to happen when the laptop is idle but also when it's simply been on a long time. The clicks can range from intermittent (every 10-15 secs.) to quite rampant (every 2 secs.)

Putting the laptop under heavy use can silence the clicking but it is still there and quite torturous when I'm using Word or Photoshop as concentration is effected by this irritating sound. 

I've been reading various things around forums about messing around with Advanced Power Management but my laptop doesn't have any APM feature. 

Does anybody have any solution to this?. Laptop cost $1200 and it seems quite a shoddy piece of hardware for this price.

Thanks in advance!


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## 95Viper (Mar 23, 2014)

There are a few apps out there to enable and dis-able or control the APM and AAM features of the drives.

You can try... Crystal Disk, QuietHDD, HDPARM TOOL FOR WINDOWS or HDDScan for starters.


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## Aquinus (Mar 23, 2014)

What @95Viper said. First thing is first, check SMART.


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## Doorways (Mar 23, 2014)

Aquinus said:


> What @95Viper said. First thing is first, check SMART.



Thanks for the responses. I should have mentioned I have done full diagnostics checks and used SMART thru HD Tune, but nothing has shown up. The HDD is working perfectly except for the soft clicking noise. With regard to using HDPARM, I have read this only gives temporary relief (http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking), is this true? I have also read it can pose other dangers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdparm) and that the reduction of noise might come at the expense of weaker performance.

My laptop is still under warranty and when all else fails I will return it but my fear there too is that they will says its acting like normal which I have also read across the internet. However, this contradicts Hitachi Support who say there should be no noise at all. I want to be prepared.


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## Jetster (Mar 23, 2014)

Crystal Disk will read smart data when HDTune won't. If the data is good then run it. If not then replace it. You can't fix a bad drive


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## Aquinus (Mar 23, 2014)

Run an extended SMART diagnostic test on it. Even drives that work perfectly fine will complain about bad LBAs if they exist. So I recommend doing that. Also can you post your SMART for the drive? Even if it doesn't say it is failing, there could be indicators that it may fail without failing SMART. Such as time to spin up, raw read error rates, etc.


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## Doorways (Mar 23, 2014)

Aquinus said:


> Run an extended SMART diagnostic test on it. Even drives that work perfectly fine will complain about bad LBAs if they exist. So I recommend doing that. Also can you post your SMART for the drive? Even if it doesn't say it is failing, there could be indicators that it may fail without failing SMART. Such as time to spin up, raw read error rates, etc.



Thanks Aquinus. Can you point me in the direction of a download for an extended SMART diagnostics? I'm a bit concerned about getting the correct download. Thanks.


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## Doorways (Mar 25, 2014)

Doorways said:


> Thanks Aquinus. Can you point me in the direction of a download for an extended SMART diagnostics? I'm a bit concerned about getting the correct download. Thanks.



It would be cool if somebody could help me out on this. Cheers


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## 95Viper (Mar 25, 2014)

You should be able to run Hitachi's Diagnostic software (WinDFT).
It has Short and Long (extended) smart tests.
WinDFT SETUP AND USERS GUIDE
DOWNLOAD WinDFT


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## Doorways (Mar 25, 2014)

95Viper said:


> You should be able to run Hitachi's Diagnostic software (WinDFT).
> It has Short and Long (extended) smart tests.
> WinDFT SETUP AND USERS GUIDE
> DOWNLOAD WinDFT



No tried that before, doesn't work for me. When it downloads, a box opens with buttons that do nothing when you click them. See image.


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## 95Viper (Mar 25, 2014)

Try PassMark DiskCheckup... it is free to use.
Download (1.28 MB)


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## FX-GMC (Mar 25, 2014)

Doorways said:


> No tried that before, doesn't work for me. When it downloads, a box opens with buttons that do nothing when you click them. See image.



Most likely the application isn't getting the rights to read what drives are on the computer.

Right click the exe and run as administrator.


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## Doorways (Mar 28, 2014)

FX-GMC said:


> Most likely the application isn't getting the rights to read what drives are on the computer.
> 
> Right click the exe and run as administrator.



Hi, it got the rights and the image I showed was all it came up with. I've also done a SMART check now without any errors. Having checked the BIOS there is no APM option to change any of those settings.

Is this issue originally stated something anybody here is at all familiar with? I keep coming up with info that changing the APM settings solves the problem but if there is no APM option is there an answer? Thank you.


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## Doorways (Apr 10, 2014)

Just returning to this and this problem, as common as it appears is obviously one of the most trickiest issues for any techies out there. The entire internet has no answers to this subject, as of yet.


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## eidairaman1 (Apr 10, 2014)

its not a problem with the hdd afaik, Windows does optimize itself when idle, but you could have something on there that is not letting that hdd rest.


http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads/legacy-downloads


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## Doorways (Apr 10, 2014)

eidairaman1 said:


> its not a problem with the hdd afaik, Windows does optimize itself when idle, but you could have something on there that is not letting that hdd rest.
> 
> 
> http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads/legacy-downloads



Thanks for the response eidairaman1. Have you any idea what that something could be? I've contacted Hitachi and they don't know what it is either and just said to bring it back but I've been told the machine is operating as normal. The issue is proving to be quite a pain. My only solution has been to run HD Tune constantly which fortunately silences it.


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## eidairaman1 (Apr 10, 2014)

You can try FeatureTool, or DFT, which is more comprehensive at scanning for issues, but that small click could be Windows using its idle cycle to optimize the drive-indexing is the biggest ive noticed in past.


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## AsRock (Apr 10, 2014)

maybe it's just windows defraging and sorting ou data to be read from HDD\ram.


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## Doorways (Apr 10, 2014)

@eidairaman1, I tried installing the Feature Tool but it won't run on my laptop for some reason. It appears from the description though that it would grant access to the HDD settings. I've read that by changing the power setting on the HDD, that could solve the issue. I'll have to look into DFT, have you any further information on this?

Thanks for your input AsRock but the problem is a lot more complicated unfortunately.


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## MikeMurphy (Apr 10, 2014)

Doorways said:


> Thanks for the responses. I should have mentioned I have done full diagnostics checks and used SMART thru HD Tune, but nothing has shown up. The HDD is working perfectly except for the soft clicking noise. With regard to using HDPARM, I have read this only gives temporary relief (http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking), is this true? I have also read it can pose other dangers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdparm) and that the reduction of noise might come at the expense of weaker performance.
> 
> My laptop is still under warranty and when all else fails I will return it but my fear there too is that they will says its acting like normal which I have also read across the internet. However, this contradicts Hitachi Support who say there should be no noise at all. I want to be prepared.



Disabling head parks with HDPARM is what i've been doing for many years now.  There is no performance impact.  It's safe as long as you don't drop your laptop when it's running.  Create a shortcut and put it in your "Startup" folder and it will automatically run when you turn on your laptop.  Having your laptop come out of sleep may require you to manually select the shortcut to disable head parking.

Try it out and see if you like it.  It's not difficult to configure.


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## TheHunter (Apr 10, 2014)

I can get this clicking sound if I install latest leaked Intel Rapid storage AHCI driver v 13.0.0.1098whql, beta does it too.. I have 1 Samsung F3 1tb and 500Gb Hitachi. I thing spinpoint is doing it, cant really tell.. 

Once it starts clicking it does it in bios as well,  to fix it i have to swap sata ports and uninstall this RST 13 and go back to 12.9whql.


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## kn00tcn (Apr 10, 2014)

can you show us the SMART values in their entirety? can you make an acceptable sounding audio recording?

i know & use some seagates from 2008 that seem to head park randomly with the 'high fly writes' value going up over time

mine actually have a couple sounds, one is like a mouse click that is more often than the full head park


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## eidairaman1 (Apr 11, 2014)

Doorways said:


> @eidairaman1, I tried installing the Feature Tool but it won't run on my laptop for some reason. It appears from the description though that it would grant access to the HDD settings. I've read that by changing the power setting on the HDD, that could solve the issue. I'll have to look into DFT, have you any further information on this?
> 
> Thanks for your input AsRock but the problem is a lot more complicated unfortunately.



its easiest to use feature tool as a boot CD, in DOS Mode Pretty Much, DFT is designed for Hitachi/IBM drives, so it should be able to sort out any hardware issues, but honestly i think Your HDD is fine just that Windows is Indexing when youre not doing anything with it, no HDD is free of noise


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## Doorways (Apr 11, 2014)

eidairaman1 said:


> its easiest to use feature tool as a boot CD, in DOS Mode Pretty Much, DFT is designed for Hitachi/IBM drives, so it should be able to sort out any hardware issues, but honestly i think Your HDD is fine just that Windows is Indexing when youre not doing anything with it, no HDD is free of noise



Yeh I never believed there was anything actually wrong with the HDD but just that this noise was a bit OTT and reflected some bad setting. I tried booting the Feature Tool from a DVD but it wouldn't open up on restart and pressing the correct F keys. The laptop just comes on as usual after several attempts.


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## Doorways (Apr 13, 2014)

MikeMurphy said:


> Disabling head parks with HDPARM is what i've been doing for many years now.  There is no performance impact.  It's safe as long as you don't drop your laptop when it's running.  Create a shortcut and put it in your "Startup" folder and it will automatically run when you turn on your laptop.  Having your laptop come out of sleep may require you to manually select the shortcut to disable head parking.
> 
> Try it out and see if you like it.  It's not difficult to configure.



Thanks MikeMurphy. I will try out the HDPARM as a last resort and hopefully I'll be onto a "winning streak" but does anybody know if using such programs to alter hardware performance can interfere with my warranty?


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