[ltp] Harddrive Clicking

[Sebastian Geiger]

@Christian:
as I wrote in the second paragraph, the load cycle count increased from
1400 to 2500 over night. This is exactly the output from smartctl -A
/dev/sda, whats more is it does increase with every click i hear.

@Noah:
500000 is really excessive and ist about 5/6 of the drives live as was
written in the specs of the Seagate drive (<600000). However, note that
this does not seem to be a Problem with Seagate in particullar, I belive
its more a problem with how the Bios/OS accesses the drive or even how
smart parameters are set. In the Wiki is is mentioned that this Problem
also occurs on Samsung, Hitachi and Toshiba drives. I might even guess
that it wont exclude Maxtor and Western Digial and therefore would be
present with all major disk manufacturers in the world.

So lets summarize what we know:

1. The problem is only present when the drive is in idle mode
2. The problem seems to be present on most (all) hard drive types
(manufacturers) and might not be related to the drive it self.
3. Its probably a software / BIOS issue and not a hardware malfunction.
4. A possible fix could be to adjust the S.M.A.R.T. settings for the
power management, yet this does not work always and for every drive.

I recognized that my drive is not listed in the database of
smartmontools as known drive. It would be interesting to find out if the
drive not being in the database is somehow related to the clicking sound.

What I also found out while doing previous research was, that IBM/Lenovo
has a special customized firmware build into their native (Hitachi)
drives, thus making the drive about 100-150 USD$ more expansive than the
exactly same drive purchased from an online store. The firmware seem to
controll the shock sensors HEAD_RAMP_UNLOAD function (if i remember
correctly). I wonder if our problem is related to the fact that we use a
OEM firmware and not the Lenovo firmware in our drives.

Anyway these are just my thoughts, I currently do not have any clue as
to how to fix this Problem. If anyone has a good Idea I would be happy
to hear it.
Best Regards
Sebastian

Noah Dain wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Sebastian Geiger <sbastig@gmx.net> wrote:
>   
>> Dear all,
>>
>> after having written that I exchanged my build in 120GB Hitachi drive
>> for a 320GB Seagate (ST9320421AS) drive last week, I now find, that I
>> hear a strange clicking sound some times. Being on Windows this is
>> almost all the time the case, while being on Linux it is only from time
>> to time. I belive the sound comes from the head loading and parking,
>> since the sound is more like two rapid clicks, rather than one. Having
>> read the following article:
>> "http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking" I still
>> have no solution.
>>
>> I tried all of the commands, with the result, that the 193 load cycle
>> count increased over night from 1400 to 2500 and the laptop would wake
>> up from suspend immediately after successfully suspending. A reboot fix
>> that, since these commands are not permanent. Various hard drive checks,
>> including the SeaTools Dos version (boot cd) and the bios build in hdd
>> diagnosis programm confirmed that the drive is ok. I also tried running
>> MHDD (a dos programm) but it can not access the drive. In AHCI mode it
>> will say drive busy (not ready or something like that). Once I also got
>> that the drive is ATA Password protectet, also I have not set a
>> password. In Compatibility mode MHDD would just freeze and not respond.
>> SeaTools reported that the drive was "Security Freeze Locked" which
>> means that no Password can be set on the drive afaik.
>>
>> I tried using hdparm -B ... /dev/sda with the numbers 255, 254 and 128
>> having no success what so ever, except that it breaks suspend to ram.
>> Besides the clicking being very annoying I am worried that I will
>> decrease my hard drive life time. Does anyone have experienced similar
>> things with their hard drive?
>>
>> Best Regards
>> Sebastian
>> --
>> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
>> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
>>
>>     
>
> Got the same thing here.  Replaced sata hdd on a T61 with a 7200rpm
> seagate (ST9120823AS), and when idle it clicks.  Exactly what is
> described in the thinkwiki link above. ... Oh, and reading more of
> that page, it mentions my hdd in particular.  oh shi ...
>
> - The system doesn't have any shock protection mechanism or anything
> else like that (none built into the hdd either.)
>
> - I've resorted to suspending the machine whenever possible, and
> didn't even think about it until I read your post.
>
> - I am running smartmontools daemon (smartd)
>
> - My load_cycle_count is currently 509943.  Which, as I've only gotten
> the machine earlier this year seems excessive.  In fact, I think I'll
> be ordering another drive today.  And it won't be a seagate, that's
> for damned sure.
>
> - using `hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda` seems to have stopped the
> load_cycle_count from increasing.  Of course, I'll probably need to
> hook that into the suspend/resume actions as well.  :-/
>
> thanks for the heads up!
>
>
>