occasional hard drive "click"?

[PattiMichelle]

I have an i7 HP laptop (dv7t-4000) with 8GB. I have noticed an occasional, sort of "ripple-click" hard drive sound when I'm booted in linux (either Kubuntu 11.4 or OpenSuSE) but I never hear this sound when I'm running Win7. I'm sure the Win/linux HD drivers are different (all OS's are 64-bit). I'm a little concerned about a hard drive crash because the sound is rather harsh. Otherwise the drives are very quiet.

The sound seems to happen sort of randomly - once every half-hour or so? - not connected particularly to whether I'm doing number crunching or not. They're new hard drives. I have indexing turned off and swappines set quite low. I've run the BIOS HD diagnostic with no results.

[wizard10000]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

My guess is thermal recalibration. If your hard drive was going tango uniform you'd hear the noise in Windows as well.

[GreyGeek]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Next time it happens open a Konsole and run dmesg. It may contain a message indicating that it did something related to the HD.

[Snowhog]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

PattiMichelle@

I deleted your last two posts. It isn't appropriate, nor really helpful, to post the entire contents of the dmesg file. Instead, click on Additional Options... when composing your post, and click on Choose File. The caveat is that you need to make a copy of the dmesg file (in /var/log) as dmesg.txt (you have to do so as root: sudo cp /var/log/dmesg /var/log/dmesg.txt). Then navigate to /var/log and click on the dmesg.txt file. This way you are only uploading the file for others to look over.

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

It happened again, and within 5 seconds I entered sudo dmesg - does this make any sense?

[ 749.280911] cfg80211: Disabling freq 2467 MHz
[ 749.280914] cfg80211: Disabling freq 2472 MHz
[ 749.280918] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US
[ 749.280920] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[ 749.280925] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm)
[ 749.280930] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm)
[ 749.280934] cfg80211: (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 749.280939] cfg80211: (5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 749.280943] cfg80211: (5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 749.280947] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm)
[ 778.132439] CE: hpet2 increased min_delta_ns to 7500 nsec
[ 778.132455] CE: hpet2 increased min_delta_ns to 11250 nsec
[ 3862.731990] CE: hpet5 increased min_delta_ns to 7500 nsec
[ 3862.732001] CE: hpet5 increased min_delta_ns to 11250 nsec
[ 4162.603061] CE: hpet4 increased min_delta_ns to 7500 nsec
[ 4162.603072] CE: hpet4 increased min_delta_ns to 11250 nsec
patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

PattiMichelle@

I deleted your last two posts. It isn't appropriate, nor really helpful, to post the entire contents of the dmesg file. Instead, click on Additional Options... when composing your post, and click on Choose File. The caveat is that you need to make a copy of the dmesg file (in /var/log) as dmesg.txt (you have to do so as root: sudo cp /var/log/dmesg /var/log/dmesg.txt). Then navigate to /var/log and click on the dmesg.txt file. This way you are only uploading the file for others to look over.

Thanks - I was going to ask that you do that. I hope this one isn't too long... I'll also try the method you suggest.

Patti :P

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Hmmm.... curiouser and curiouser - it just clicked again and there were no new lines in dmesg. So I guess that stuff I posted here doesn't relate to the click. Sad - I really like linux but I don't want to loose a hard drive.

[dibl]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

It happened again, and within 5 seconds I entered sudo dmesg - does this make any sense?

[ 749.280911] cfg80211: Disabling freq 2467 MHz
[ 749.280914] cfg80211: Disabling freq 2472 MHz
[ 749.280918] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US
[ 749.280920] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[ 749.280925] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm)
[ 749.280930] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm)
[ 749.280934] cfg80211: (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 749.280939] cfg80211: (5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 749.280943] cfg80211: (5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 749.280947] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm)
[ 778.132439] CE: hpet2 increased min_delta_ns to 7500 nsec
[ 778.132455] CE: hpet2 increased min_delta_ns to 11250 nsec
[ 3862.731990] CE: hpet5 increased min_delta_ns to 7500 nsec
[ 3862.732001] CE: hpet5 increased min_delta_ns to 11250 nsec
[ 4162.603061] CE: hpet4 increased min_delta_ns to 7500 nsec
[ 4162.603072] CE: hpet4 increased min_delta_ns to 11250 nsec
patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$

That looks like your wifi driver dynamically adjusting the radio, although I'm not sure why it would need to do that. It looks like it changed to US channels from some other country's channelization.

As an experiment, you could turn off wifi in BIOS (or maybe with a key press if that is supported), and then continue to observe your computer. If the drive clicking stops, then you will know the cause, if not the fix. If the drive clicking makes no change, then you will have eliminated one possible cause.

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

it just did the click again, and I got something different... (Is that a timestamp at the front of each line? If so, is there a way to know when those entries were written?) Then it did it again, and there was no change, so I think I need to relate the dmesg times to when the clicks actually happen. I think the writing to dmesg is instantaneous, correct?
[59192.792374] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59192.809486] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59192.830821] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59192.985639] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59193.032190] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59193.486150] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59193.516469] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
[59193.879049] ecryptfs_read_and_validate_header_region: Error reading header region; rc = [-4]
patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$

[oshunluvr]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

I'd bet money you're about to lose that drive.

What does smart say? Assuming your drive is smart enabled and you have smartmontools installed:

sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda

[sithlord48]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

a ticking drive can only mean one thing.. back up the drive and plan to replace it.
its just tappin the platter, at first its only once in a while with no issues related to it. but it will become more frequent as the platter and the read head start to change from contact with one another. somewhere around that you start w/ the seaminly random read errors..then your gonna get more frequent clicks.eventally making a groove or breaking the read head it self.but no way around it that drive is doomed. i have problems trusting smart its lied to me more then once so i usually take its results "with a grain of salt" as the expression goes.

[GreyGeek]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Your "hpet2" messages are related to the high precision event timer doing some hunting. My system was giving me those messages while my wireless connection was hanging for up to 30 seconds at a time or more before it would kick in again and behave normally. Also, my boot was slow. The hpet has also been fingered as responsible for some DMA problems with floppies and HDs, and interference with the iwlang driver.

I added

#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" modified 6/3/2001 to add hpet=diable
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash hpet=disable"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash hpet=disable"

to /etc/default/grub
and my hpet messages ceased. My boot is faster and my wifi doesn't randomly "hang" (except on this forum, which is the ONLY website on which temporary hanging occurs.).

PS: I forgot to add that you should run "update-grub" after you make the change, then reboot.

[wizard10000]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

a ticking drive can only mean one thing.. back up the drive and plan to replace it.
its just tappin the platter, at first its only once in a while with no issues related to it. but it will become more frequent as the platter and the read head start to change from contact with one another. somewhere around that you start w/ the seaminly random read errors..then your gonna get more frequent clicks.eventally making a groove or breaking the read head it self.but no way around it that drive is doomed. i have problems trusting smart its lied to me more then once so i usually take its results "with a grain of salt" as the expression goes.

Drive heads don't contact the platters outside of the disk's landing zone. The ticking noise (if it isn't thermal recalibration which would happen after a few read errors and is normal) is actuator noise.

The interesting thing is it doesn't happen in Windows. It'll be interesting to see what smart says as I still think the drive is operating normally. I've heard several folks say their laptops seemed to run hotter with Natty but Patti should back up her data now and fairly regularly just to be on the safe side.

I've had a couple of Hitachi drives that made that "whine-click"noise for years and finally got retired as my storage requirements increased - neither of the drives failed

Another option would be to have the drive replaced under warranty now - but don't tell 'em you're running Linux

There might be some value in baselining CPU core temperature in Windows and in Linux.

[ardvark71]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Hi all...

While I don't know if the OP's hard drive is failing or not, this reminds me of a laptop that my mother gave me back in 2008 for a few weeks. The hard drive never clicked when she had it but when I set it up at my apartment, it would click once at random but continuous intervals. After I gave it back to her and received the laptop I am now using, the clicking stopped and ran normally again.

@PattiMichelle: In case I missed it, what is the brand, model and type of your hard drive?

Regards...

[sithlord48]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

That part i missed..

The interesting thing is it doesn't happen in Windows. It'll be interesting to see what smart says as I still think the drive is operating normally. I've heard several folks say their laptops seemed to run hotter with Natty but Patti should back up her data now and fairly regularly just to be on the safe side.

I've had a couple of Hitachi drives that made that "whine-click"noise for years and finally got retired as my storage requirements increased - neither of the drives failed

i missed the part about it not happening in windows.i've seen them physically contact way out side the landing zone, its not a pretty sight.large scratch mid platter. if patti has not droped or otherwise "shocked" the drive and it only happens in linux , it very well could just be from extra heat. the newer kernel we know uses more power because of a bug, and that power at some point must be turned in to heat.