Am i hearing the "Click of Death"?

[Force Gaia]

Related to my troubleshooting question: Random short-term freezes, Random HDD respin, combined with odd audio device behaviour. Motherboard/CPU issue?

 

I'd like to check if what i'm hearing from my 2x Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB HDDs when there is (seemingly) no access to them, and if it's the dreaded click of death. I'd describe sound I'm hearing as a dull thud, not metallic (like the wikipedia sound clip is), and kinda like the sound you'd hear if the drive was seeking. (i have attempted a recording and attached, not sure how much use they'll be) If it was seeking I'd understand it, but as far as i can tell, nothing is accessing it. Sysinternals DiskMon only lists reads and writes to Disks 4 and 2, my OS NVMe SSD and general data SATA SSD respectively. My HDDs are disks 0 and 1.

 

S.M.A.R.T seems to show no problems, and HWiNFO is showing no access to those drives either

 

Am I potentially listening to a dying drive (or drives)?

HDD no access.wav HDD with access.wav

[Jumballi]

sometimes drives will make a clicking noise as they get older, but since they have a timed warranty and a moving part, it's generally best to not use the drive for important data once the warranty expires.

[Force Gaia]

2 minutes ago, Jumballi said:

sometimes drives will make a clicking noise as they get older, but since they have a timed warranty and a moving part, it's generally best to not use the drive for important data once the warranty expires.

What do you define as "older"? as these are 2 years old, in a desktop that only gets moved if i need to plug something in

[Jumballi]

Just now, Force Gaia said:

What do you define as "older"? as these are 2 years old, in a desktop that only gets moved if i need to plug something in

The drive itself has a arm that moves inside it, nothing you can do about that, that's how they work.

 

A drive can have a 1-5 year warranty depending on the consumer level you bought. Barracuda tend to have an avg of 2 year warranty, which is the length of time the manufacturer expects the drive to work before experiencing failure.

[Force Gaia]

1 minute ago, Jumballi said:

The drive itself has a arm that moves inside it, nothing you can do about that, that's how they work.

 

A drive can have a 1-5 year warranty depending on the consumer level you bought. Barracuda tend to have an avg of 2 year warranty, which is the length of time the manufacturer expects the drive to work before experiencing failure.

I am well aware of how a mechanical HDD works. But is that arm supposed to make noise, like moving and seeking, if the drive is not supposedly not being accessed? In this instance i'm hearing this clicking when there is no activity on those drives, when i would expect the read/write head to not be moving.

So drives are considered old after whatever warranty expires? I thought that was just minimum lifespan.

[Jumballi]

1 minute ago, Force Gaia said:

I am well aware of how a mechanical HDD works. But is that arm supposed to make noise, like moving and seeking, if the drive is not supposedly not being accessed? In this instance i'm hearing this clicking when there is no activity on those drives, when i would expect the read/write head to not be moving.

So drives are considered old after whatever warranty expires? I thought that was just minimum lifespan.

your drive is always being used, either moving data for more efficient access or antivirus. There are settings iirc that can limit that but I'm not the guy to ask about that.

 

for many components, the second the manufacturer doesn't service it anymore, especially with ssd and hdd that have timed lifespans, they old. that's my definition, some people are stricter and call stuff old before the warranty is over,

[Force Gaia]

1 minute ago, Jumballi said:

your drive is always being used, either moving data for more efficient access or antivirus. There are settings iirc that can limit that but I'm not the guy to ask about that.

I'm not so sure about that "more efficient access" bit, as if the drive was doing that automatically we'd not need to defrag. As for AV and the like, i can see your point there, but if the HDD was being accessed by the system, DiskMon would have a log of it.

[RejZoR]

Crystal Disk Info. I only trust this program to make feedback on my drives. And the one from vendor itself like WD, Seagate or Samsung...

[Sir0Tek]

8 hours ago, Force Gaia said:

 

 

Am I potentially listening to a dying drive (or drives)?

HDD no access.wav 789.11 kB · 0 downloads HDD with access.wav 807.07 kB · 1 download

Not necessarily. Drives do rearrange data on the disk while idle sometimes, so they work (read/write) also without incoming/outgoing data. The first sounds like it. The 'click of death' is totally different.

There could also be the sound of parking heads, maybe even calibration. These are abolutely normal.

[Sir0Tek]

8 hours ago, Jumballi said:

The drive itself has a arm that moves inside it, nothing you can do about that, that's how they work.

 

A drive can have a 1-5 year warranty depending on the consumer level you bought. Barracuda tend to have an avg of 2 year warranty, which is the length of time the manufacturer expects the drive to work before experiencing failure.

 

This isn't true. First, Barracuda Pro does have 5 yrs warranty and the warranty is not equal to MTBF. Faulty drives fail quite quickly in my experience, if a drive even with just 2yrs of warranty survives the first 3-6 month the odds are high it will survive several years of use without any problem.

[Force Gaia]

So i discovered what this was. I had a monitoring program open that was checking the entire pc, including things such as HDD SMART, temps, etc. And it was polling that data. This poll must have caused the disk to seek, even without a read/write command that DiskMon would see.