Strange HDD (RAID 1) Clicking Noises

[X-J]

I have (2) 4TB Western Digital Gold HDDs in RAID 1 (mirrored) and (2) 8TB HGST HDDs in RAID 1 (Mirrored) as well.

 

I use both arrays for DATA only. 

 

I have a Samsung 860 EVO SSD (1TB) as my primary drive with Win 10 x64 pro.

 

I have another Samsung 860 EVO SSD (2TB) as a DATA drive that I use for Virtualbox VMs (Virtual Machines).

 

Periodically I am getting some really weird successive clicking sounds that do not give me a good feeling.

 

Hoping someone here can ID the sounds and let me know if I should be worried or not.

 

The sound occurs like 6 times in succession.

 

It happens usually only once during a power up cycle ... as far as I can tell. 

I wear my headphones a lot, so Im not always paying attention.

 

I have added LINKS to the SOUND and MY HDD Benchmarks.

 

NOTE(s): 

- The RAID setup is using Windows built-in software RAID setup

- The benchmarks were taken on each HDD separately before they were put in a RAID configuration

- I bought the 2nd HGST HDD a year later that the first.

  I've noticed that it runs 3 deg C hotter and the throughput is about 20% slower

- The HDDs are about (1) year old except for the new HGST drive. 

- The MOBO has SATA 2 which is supposed to have 3Gbs (300MB/s) maximum speeds.

  How is that the 2TB Samsung 860 EVO is getting 500MB/s + speeds?

 

Let me know what you think I should do to make sure things are working correctly.

 

If there is a questionable drive, how do I go about isolating it?

 

What software do you recommend for testing?

I use CrystalDiskMark and HDTune. 

 

Are these sounds routine for drives in a RAID 1 configuration?

 

As always, Thanks in Advance. 

 

 

HARD DRIVE CLICK SOUND

https://sndup.net/rzf7/

 

 

HARD DRIVE BENCHMARK AND SETUP PICTURES
https://ibb.co/RYrNfyt

 

 

COMPUTER SETUP

ASUS P6T Deluxe - MOBO

Core i7 920 - CPU

(6 x 4GB) Crucial DDR3 (1600Mhz) running @ 1333Mhz

MSI GTX 1650 Super - Graphics Card

Corsair RM750i - PSU

 

 

 

 

[SupaKomputa]

clicking noise can be physical degradation or bad sector.

i suggest backing up the drive and do a low level format.

some of my drive are resurrected with this method, though i strongly recommend you dont use it for anything important.

[Ursacian]

I had the same issue as OP today when I setup a RAID 0 with 3 HDDs on a raspberry pi 4: One of the HDDs was making ticking sounds every 5-6 seconds then pause for a little while. 

In the end it was a power issue, that HDD did not have enough power. Switching things around fixed the ticking for me

[wseaton]

You need to run a SMART check on your spinners immediately.

 

I thought crystal disk did this? I use the WMIC command in windows.