occasional hard drive "click"?

[dibl]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

There's also this somewhat aged issue: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.ph...ds_under_Linux

Previously considered fixed, but regressions are always possible ...

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

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

Regards...

All: Thank you very much for your time and knowledge!! I've heard the hard-drive-ticking failure sound (several times too often!) and this is not that - it usually ends with a tiny "thunk" - as if it was all about "homing" the heads. Also, recall that I never hear this when I'm running Win7 - so it's not a simple drive-is-failing. It happens under both linux distros I have installed, so I'm guessing its related to a kernel driver for the HDs. I did run the BIOS disk test (simple and in-depth) and they passed.

HP dv7t-4000, 8GB, i7

patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$ sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

[PattiMichelle]

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.

Ahh. Well, this might answer why it doesn't happen under Win7, except for the fact that the drive itself (under my right palm) doesn't seem to get very hot. I haven't shocked the drive/computer. It's a newer WD advanced-format drive.

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

To check the HD temperature you can install hddtemp,

When you'd rather have a graphical interface use the gnome disk utility and smartmonitor.

Generally you want the HD temperature to stay below 60°C.

I was checking out GSmartControl but there's no indication of the temperature...

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Right after a click...

patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$ sudo hddtemp /dev/sda
/dev/sda: WDC WD7500BPKT-75PK4T0: 39°C
patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$ sudo hddtemp /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb: WDC WD10TPVT-00HT5T0: 35°C
patti@dv7t-Kubuntu64:~$

A thought: Could this be related to these being Advanced Format drives? I partitioned the Linux installs normally (meaning no 4k awareness).

[oshunluvr]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

I believe this information would have been useful earlier...

http://linuxconfig.org/linux-wd-ears-advanced-format

You might be experiencing the every 8 second parking mentioned in the above article (poorly written, but see section 4)

http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...id=609&sid=113

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

THANK YOU everyone for your time and thoughts!!!

Thought I can't shake the idea that this may be a 4K drive issue, I'm still flummoxed at this point - the click only happens on average several minutes apart, so it seems unlikely to me that it's related to parking the heads every 8 seconds, but I suppose anything's possible. Not sure what to do more at this point to try to diagnose the issue. Maybe a hardware/kernel wizard will take pity on my fear of hard drives crashing.

A thought - is there a hard-drive test/exercise utility that runs under Kubuntu that's very good? I've tried the BIOS test and the Windows test, and the WD alignment tool shows every non-EXT4 drive is properly aligned (I use NTFS for most Data drives, but this has never been a problem before).

[GreyGeek]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

I noticed that both HDs are Western Digital. There is this disturbing bit of news that may apply to your HDs.
http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-crit...reen-hdds.html

It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3 mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.

According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:

• Loud clunking/clicking/buzzing noises every few seconds.
• Artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles in S.M.A.R.T.
• Possibly shortens life-time of the HDD.
• Possibly reduces performance of the HDD.

Western Digital posted a knowledge base article, where it claims that "The number of systems using such applications and utilities is limited", a statement which we believe is false and inaccurate. Sending an HDD to idle mode only after 8 seconds of activity is abnormal behavior, which much software doesn't like as they are constantly writing and reading data to/from the HDD.

According to Western Digital, the following models are affected: WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS, WD1000FYPS, WD7500AYPS and WD7501AYPS.

Western Digital has released a DOS-based utility to modify the behavior of the HDD to wait longer before invoking idle mode. However, since most of their latest HDDs still ship with the default setting of 8 seconds, we strongly recommend users with affected HDDs to use the utility and monitor S.M.A.R.T data immediately.

The model numbers are close enough to the warning numbers that I'd check it out.

[dibl]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Right -- that is the same issue as I referred to in reply #15 above. I had thought that issue was resolved as it goes back some years, but apparently not for WD Greens.

[GreyGeek]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Corporations are now so willing to lie for the bottom line that I wouldn't trust ANYTHING any of them said regarding discovered problems. Reminds me of what NVidia did covering up their video chip disaster. Deliberately lying about the duration and extent of the disaster. It went on for 18 months BEFORE they admitted it and it covered more than twice the number of models they claim were affected. The multi-billion dollar lawsuits are, the last I heard, still working their way through the courts.

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

They mention IDE mode in order to use the utility. I'm pretty sure I installed AHCI mode - I hope you only need IDE mode for the patching, and can switch back after...

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

Corporations are now so willing to lie for the bottom line that I wouldn't trust ANYTHING any of them said regarding discovered problems. Reminds me of what NVidia did covering up their video chip disaster. Deliberately lying about the duration and extent of the disaster. It went on for 18 months BEFORE they admitted it and it covered more than twice the number of models they claim were affected. The multi-billion dollar lawsuits are, the last I heard, still working their way through the courts.

Stone Age, Bronze Age, Steel Age, Aluminum Age, CYA Age...

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive "click"?

BRILLIANT piece of detective work, Grey!!! I downloaded the .iso, burned it, (no AHCI/IDE in my bios), it booted to FreeDOS and an A: prompt, I ran it, and it seemed to work as-advertised, although 5 minutes was the maximum between-park time one can set. I guess that's good. Maybe if I set swappiness to some small value (I have 8GB ram). It seemed to find both my WD hard drives, so far no more clicks. <whew!> 8)

This is probably something that should be spread throughout the *nix community somehow... There are a lot of WD's out there.

Humbly Grateful,
PattiMichelle

PS: Since the clicks didn't happen at 8 second intervals (but nonetheless appear to have been fixed by this patch) - then it must be that most of the parking is silent, but only occasionally is heard when the auto-park "collides" with some system request. Does this seem reasonable? If so, it will still happen occasionally, but on average only about 1/30th as often (maybe a few times a day?)...

I noticed that both HDs are Western Digital. There is this disturbing bit of news that may apply to your HDs.
http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-crit...reen-hdds.html

It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3 mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.

According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:

• Loud clunking/clicking/buzzing noises every few seconds.
• Artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles in S.M.A.R.T.
• Possibly shortens life-time of the HDD.
• Possibly reduces performance of the HDD.

Western Digital posted a knowledge base article, where it claims that "The number of systems using such applications and utilities is limited", a statement which we believe is false and inaccurate. Sending an HDD to idle mode only after 8 seconds of activity is abnormal behavior, which much software doesn't like as they are constantly writing and reading data to/from the HDD.

According to Western Digital, the following models are affected: WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS, WD1000FYPS, WD7500AYPS and WD7501AYPS.

Western Digital has released a DOS-based utility to modify the behavior of the HDD to wait longer before invoking idle mode. However, since most of their latest HDDs still ship with the default setting of 8 seconds, we strongly recommend users with affected HDDs to use the utility and monitor S.M.A.R.T data immediately.

The model numbers are close enough to the warning numbers that I'd check it out.

[ardvark71]

Re: occasional hard drive &quot;click&quot;?

Wow, great detective work!

I agree completely. Outstanding work, GreyGeek!

Regards...

[PattiMichelle]

Re: occasional hard drive &quot;click&quot;?

Should this thread be made a sticky? Maybe just a summary of the results as a "howto?" It seems really important. Maybe a wizard could make a linux app to make the same settings (it's currently written in free-dos) which would work at runlevel 5?