"Power off retract count" is WAAAAAAy too high!

Question

I just purchased a refurbished (Black) Macbook 2.4 ghz with a 250 gig FUJITSU MHY2250BH HDD.
HDD passes SMART.
HDD often makes a subtile clicking noise. Sometimes the click is ever few seconds, sometimes it does not happen at all.
I used an application called "SMART Utility" to look at the particulars of the drive.
I FOUND SOMETHING VERY ODD:
the HDD's "Power off retract count" is very high. The actual number is 458,760.....yes, almost half of a million.
Can anyone help me or add some information about this?

Answer 1

Hi Kappy, thanks for the info.
I did a bit more reading of the FAQ for the app. "SMART Utility" and that huge number might not be the actual number.
To quote the FAQ:
"Q4. What are the differences between threshold, worst, value, and raw numbers in the attributes window, and why do some attributes show a super high value, like 426900000?
A4. The raw number is the actual, real value of the attribute. How the drive measures it is up to the manufacturer. Some put the data in a human readable format (for example, 50 in Temperature Celsius for 50 degrees Celsius), while others have a proprietary format for the data, which may be display as an extremely high number. This varies for each attribute, some are human readable, some are not. So if a number is unusually high, it's possibly not a human readable number. So how does one figure out if an attribute is okay if the raw number is in a proprietary format?
Well, that's where the other three numbers come in: “threshold”, “worst”, and “value”. “value” is the normalized equivalent of the raw data, converted internally to a number between 0 and 255 and displayed. The manufacturer defines a threshold number against which the “value” is compared, and if the “value” drops below that threshold, SMART reports that attribute as FAILING_NOW, and sets the overall health as FAILED. That is how SMART determines the status of the drive. Sometimes the “value” falls below the “threshold”, but then rises again. This is shown as an Inthepast failure, and SMART Utility marks this as a FAILING status. The final number, “worst”, shows how low the value actually got. This is probably the best way to tell just how bad the raw number is. If it is close to the threshold, the drive may be failing."
However, what lead me to use this utility is a subtile, yet irritating "click" that my HDD often makes. The sound could be described as "a ping pong ball being dropped on a hard surface." If one looks around in this forum and on the greater web, it seems others are baffled about this "Mystery sound." It is often attributed to the "head(s) parking" on the HDD. What is odd is that some people hear the sound and others do not. What is also odd, for me in particular, is that I took some steps to minimize the "head parking" of my HDD by temporarily installing "hdapm" and this did absolutely nothing to minimize the click sound of the "heads parking." So I also tried another temporary experiment and completely disabled the "sudden motion sensor" because I read that this feature may cause the noisy click of the heads parking. This measure, also, did absolutely nothing to minimize the click of the heads parking.
So, I am at a loss. However I am still annoyed by the noise of the somewhat loud click(s) of my HDD's head parking which may be caused by an over aggressive power saving mechanism that may be built into the drive itself.
If anyone can add to this discussion, I'll be happy to soak up the info.