[ltp] Harddrive Clicking

[Noah Dain]

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!


-- 
Noah Dain
"The beatings will continue, until morale improves" - the Management