I've heard a low, muffled clunking in my computer for a while now, and I think it is one of the hard drives that I use for storage (which happens to be only 2 weeks old) My other harddrives are SSD, and they don't have movable parts, right?

I did some google searching, and found out about the "Click of Death"... this sounds nothing like that.. mine is more like a muffled plastic clunking, perhaps with a small flavor of metalish sound!


But this most likely still is the "Click of Death" thing? I just wanna check with you guys first, before I do anything drastic ^^

this is what it sounds like: http://yourlisten.com/channel/content/111169/noise very bad sound quality, but increase your volume. You should be able to hear it just in the end, but there are some VERY low sound noises in them beginning as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwYSdD4fyRU It could be just reading/writing data. Some HDDs, like the WD Caviar Black are very loud. I recently have had a HDD go bad on me. I would check it using http://www.hdtune.com/index.html or http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html And yes, SSD's have no moving parts.

Nope, it doesn't click really like that.. It sort of clonks.. it sounds a little like hard plastic material expanding/creaking.. in a clunky way. Or like something plastic bumps into something.. and its kind of muffled. I'm 99% sure it comes from the hard drive, and it also happens more often when I directly access folders with many files located on that drive.

I will try to record the sound tomorrow!

(btw, is it spelled clonk or clunk?)

This may sound simple Have you opened your PC up to have a look inside?
Sounds to me like something could be resting on your fan whilst it's spinning - depends how frequent it is though I guess.

Just something to think about... it's often the simple things that cause us the greatest troubles.


(Also I'm sure they are both words, though I rarely hear the word 'clonk' so I assume you mean 'clunk' haha)

The easiest and best thing to do is to use one of the HDD checking utilities that Starforce9 linked you to. Sounds can be an indication of a problem but they will tell you definitively if it is the HDD.

I tried HD Tune, and it says the health status is okay.. or at least I think that's what it says.
However I'm pretty sure it must be the hard drive making the noise, because when I ran some test on it, the second I pressed start I heard the sound.
I think I've also come up with a better description of how it sounds ^^ If you drink something from a semi-soft plastic bottle, you could svck out some air, so that a "bump" appears in the plastic. The sound that bump makes when the bottle expands and resumes it original shape.. it sounds like that. And usually the sound is double, so it you hear it two times in a row directly, kind of like when you reload a gun xD

I tried to record it, but my recording device svcks

To me that sounds (pun not intended) an aweful lot like a bad click of death

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WD_bad_heads_click_of_death.ogg

Probably won't sound exactly like that, but that ba-bum plasticy sound is what I mean (your sound will probably be more muffled, hiding the metallic tang, and can even be more spaced apart)

gah, stupid edit button being too close to the quote button

Mine doesn't sound like that at all, more like a bump than a click.. that sound is "light", mine is "heavier", but I agree.. I also think I've got a death click going on here
but shouldn't the hard drive scan program detect issues like these?

How loud is the noise? Because a plastic bottle popping back into shape is pretty noisy, whereas most HDD noises tend to be more on the magnitude of someone flicking the prongs of a plastic comb.

Actually I've had annoying clicking sounds coming out of one of my DVD drives before at computer start. Popping the Disk out and back in and everything returns to normal.

You have to check though, the Hard Drive isn't the only thing with moving parts.

Well, if you're worried about it, you should get all your important data off of it. With HDTune you should do both a health and error scan. On the error scan, if the entire screen isn't green, or seems to hang at any spot, there may be a problem (a click of death won't necessarily stop it from being all green, but it should slow it down). The Health scan is a SMART test, and is just a precautionary thing, a bad HDD can easily die with a clean bill of health from a SMART test

It's pretty loud, but it sounds muffled/contained if you get what I mean... imagine that you have an empty computer tower and then drop something small on the bottom of the case, then you get a plastic "clonk" sound which sounds muffled.. it's really hard to describe. But it sounds nothing like the click videos I have found. Because those sounds click way more and do not have as much bass ^^


My initial thought was that it was a fan.. but I'm 99% sure that I can hear the sound from where the hard drive is, and it does occurr when I use that very hard drive




It's very new, so I've got almost nothing on it.

It could be the drive head parking. This is done to prevent damage to the platter from a fall or other strong force.

My Western Digital RE2 HDDs make this sound (if you listen closely). For the most part they are very quiet compared to the RaptorX. They have been in-use for 3-4 years so it isn't a defect.

I'm not a technical guru, so what exactly does "head parking" mean? What does the drive head do when it "parks"?

Also this is my hard drive, if it makes any difference: 1000GB (1TB) SATA-II, 5.400/7.200rpm & 16MB cache.. I don't have a more specific name than that...
It's really new.. only about two weeks old. I'm also pretty sure it's been making that sound all the time I've had it.. but I have scarcely used it at all, I've only played Skyrim ^^ which is on my ssd drive.

this is what it sounds like: http://yourlisten.com/channel/content/111169/noise very bad sound quality, but increase your volume. You should be able to hear it just in the end, but there are some VERY low sound noises in them beginning as well.

I meant it locks (the drive head [reader]) it in place so it doesn't accidentally touch the hard drive platter during a fall or other event. Some hard drive may not have this feature so a strong force could make the drive head move (vertically) and touch the platter, scratching it. A head drive should NEVER touch the platter.

Can anyone identify if the sound I linked is indeed some sort of "click" of death? and if not, what could it then be, and is it still bad?

many thanks in advance

Okay sorry I'm gonna make one bump to this. I would be incredibly thankful if someone with knowledge of these kinds of issues could listen to the audio track I linked, and see if it sounds like a bad hard drive.

http://yourlisten.com/channel/content/111169/noise

Anyone?

call geek squad or your nearest comp repair tech

Its really hard to tell from the audio. How often does it do this? It doesn't sound like a click of death to me.

Usually if your drive is failing or about to fail the clicks happen more and more often (as bad sectors are remapped). Remapped sector "clicks" usually happen when the drive is in use. Hard drive head parking sounds and low-level disk checks and other harmless click usually happen when the drive is idling. Obviously background processes are still in use during this time so the hard drive does have some read/write functionality.

If you experience any other issues like BSoDs, disk consistency checks, and/or random CTD type crashes. You can even check the System logs for I/O failures (look for HDD[x] failures).

It only does this while the drive is being used, for an examle if I download a file onto the drive from the internet, or if I run a program located on the drive. Sometimes the noise is triggered just by browsing through folders located on the drive. But I haven't had any CTDs, issues or freezes. It's seemingly completely functional.. it's just that damned sound. If the drive is in heavy use, the noise is pretty frequent...

Anyone?

So, your hard drive is two weeks old in your original post and making a noise, you're 100% sure it's the HDD why didn't you return it to where it was you purchased it?