Thinkpad x100e Hard Drive Clicking Sound

I don't know if it just a faulty hard drive or the way it is suppose to sound, but I can hear the clicking on the hard driver every time it is reading the hard drive. I just bought this on Monday January 25th and got it in the mail on the 27th. The first day I booted it up, I noticed it have a slight clicking sound. Didn't really think anything about but I have noticed that it had started to click more often. I have not noticed any problems with windows yet, no errors or it crashing/restarting. I ran Lenovo's software to check out the harddrive and it came up with no problems, at least on that end. But the clicking is audible enough to hear it from 4-5 feet away, if you are trying to listen to it.
I am just wondering if I should send this back to get it fixed before I actually start using it, or if this is just a typical sound.
Thanks,
cpbs

Hello cpbs, welcome to Lenovo forums!
Some hdd´s are clickier that others and a faulty hdd on such a new machine like yours is rather unlikely.
The noise maybe distort you, because the whole system itself is very quiet?
Please tell us your model number, not S/N, OS and used HDD attached to your system, when posting issues, then it will be easier to narrow it down to specific configurations.
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Please insert your type, model (not S/N) number and used OS in your posts.
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Similar Messages

Hard drive clicking sound when MBP in motion

Hi all,
I just bought the new 15" 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro with the SD card slot, and I noticed that every time I move the machine vertically (i.e. upwards or downwards), I hear a hard drive clicking sound. Sounds like a single chirp... if anybody knows what I'm talking about. What's wrong with this, or is this natural?
Thanks.

I think I have found our problem. We are not alone on this one. It actually concerns me after reading about this. Here is the link.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935
I found this under a different thread in this forum. Other users are hearing this when they "bump" the right side of the laptop or when they suddenly move the laptop.

Lenovo Z510 hard drive clicking sound

I have Lenovo Z510 and my HDD is producing clicking sounds.When this happens everything becomes frozen until clicking is over.
I has become more frequent these days.
What can be the problem?
Does Lenovo waranty covers HDD failure?

Marceticd,
From what you have described it sound like your hard drive is failing. As Cabbton pointed out now would be a good time to make a backup copy of any important files that you do not wish to lose. After the backup then contact Lenovo Support for the hard drive replacement. If your laptop is still under warranty then the hard drive will be replaced as part of the warranty.
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Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02 Hard Drive Clicking Sound?

I've got a Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02 250GB drive in my unibody MacBook Pro 13" (more details below). I notice that any time I move the computer, even gently, I get a soft clicking sound as if the drive head is moving away from the platter in some sort of g-sensitive protection move. I know plenty of drives do this to prevent platter collisions, but I've never had a computer (even my previous MacBook first-gen Unibody 13" w/ the 250GB drive) that is both (1) so touchy about activating this protection thing and (2) so loud with the click.
My question is if this is normal - should the drive be audibly clicking? Should it be doing it even if you gently move the computer, where "gentle" is defined as plenty slow enough that it isn't going to cause any drive damage at all (probably well under 1G of acceleration, for example).
[quote]
Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02:
Capacity: 250.06 GB (250,059,350,016 bytes)
Model: Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02
Revision: PB2AC60Q
[/quote]

My HTS545025B9SA02 makes a loud sound when the SMS is triggered (and the SMS does seem to be a touch sensitive, if I may say so). Also, when I switched it with a Seagate in an external USB enclosure and pulled the power, it made the same loud "clank" as it offloaded the heads. Safely removing power (ejecting the drive/shutting down/putting the computer to sleep when external, or a proper shutdown/sleep when internal) has a much quieter offload. The Seagate drive does not do this.
I guess Hitachi just wanted to ensure that there was no risk of the heads scratching the platter (or platters, for drives in this series with a greater capacity), so they have the mechanics yank everything to a safe position with more speed/more force in the above events than in a 'safe' power down.
Message was edited by: A. E. Wallace

X61 Hard Drive Clicking Sound

I have an X61 with a Seagate ST9120822AS 120GB hard drive(came with the machine) that functions fine but makes a lot of clicking noises. It is especially annonying in the library. I've tried to update the HD firmware but it seems that the new driver does not support Seagate HDs. I have heard that a clicking hard drive means that it is dying so I'm a bit worried. Is there a solution to this problem or is it just how the hard drive is designed? Thanks!

Some seagate harddrive are known to have a loud reader/writer head assembly, make sure you switch off the harddrive shutoff in the windows power management under the display property -> screen saver ->power, there is option for you to leave the harddrive on all the time. See whether this helps, if you think that the harddrive is dying, run the PC doctor 5 diagnostic on it or the HDD tests under BIOS.

T500 Hard Drive Clicking (tick tick tick)

This noise is dirving me crazy. I have a new laptop. Please refer to article below from a link that also mentions this noise problem and please provide solution.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking
Problem with hard drive clicking: sometimes described as a repeating tick tick tick type of ticking sound. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 series which shipped with many T series Thinkpads in particular is reported to suffer from this problem. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. While in use in a quiet environment the clicks can be relatively loud and very irritating to some users. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle and the power has been on for a significant period of time. The clicking is also reported on other vendor's laptop hard drives too and is therefore almost certainly a hard drive related rather than a laptop
chassis related.
The clicking sound appears to only occur when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking while the drive is busy. Launching programs that access the hard drive such as searching or defragmenting the drive helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive such as through a full power off reboot of the system stops the ticking for the moment and has been used as a temporary solution. Also see use of hdparm for another way to reset the drive without a power off reboot.
Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level, and/or set power management settings.

Hi faraz,
Have you tried Hitachi's Feature Tool as suggested? Hitachi has removed the acoustic management function in the latest version, but I think the power management setting is the one you want anyway. Set your drive for maximum performance / max power.
Good luck,
Frank
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Portable hard drive clicking but it isn't a hardware problem

Here's what I have so far:
A portable hard drive bought via ebay
A desktop that only runs arch (main computer)
A desktop that only runs ubuntu (guest computer)
The hard drive clicks (about 4 times per second) when plugged into the arch desktop regardless of which usb port/hub it's plugged into.
The hard drive works perfectly when plugged into the ubuntu desktop's usb ports.
The hard drive does not show up on lsusb on the arch desktop.
The hard drive is apple branded but the enclosure/adapter definitely isn't. I don't think this makes a difference.
My main question is: What now?
edit: sifted through some logs for a while and didn't find anything.
I'm thinking that because nothing shows up in lsusb there is a problem recognizing the sata-usb adapter.
Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2011-05-18 03:02:30)

Is the drive self powered, or is it powered from the USB bus ?
Is the drive drawing excess current ?? A USB device is not supposed to draw in excess of 100mA unless it negotiates with the host for more. Not all USB controllers respond well to devices that violate this.

Hard drive clicks a lot

I just got my iPod and everytime I play a song, the hard drive clicks for about 2 seconds. I can feel it and I can also hear it too. Is this normal?
Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Is it clicking or is it just the HD spinning and the iPod loading up the song?
Or do you hear this through the headphones?
Try comparing it to another 5G iPod. Is yours the same?
btabz

Hard Drive Clicking

I've noticed recently that my MacBook hard drive makes a very soft clicking noise at random intervals. Sometimes the clicks are seconds apart, sometimes minutes, and sometimes they don't occur at all. I only hear it when I'm working on the computer late at night, when the room is extremely quiet. Either it's not making the noise during the day or I just can't hear it. The sound is similar, although lower in volume, to the clicking sound the drive makes before shutdown. I've read varying responses on these boards, some say it's normal and some say it's a problem. I'm slightly OCD when it comes to machinery, so I could be looking for problems when none really exist. Should I be worried about this?
Macbook 2 GHz Processor Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2 GB RAM Upgrade

what is the best way to go about backing up my drive?
You'll find a lot of opinions in these forums on that topic. Many people buy an external hard drive and set it up to make regular, automatic copies of all or certain parts of the internal hard drive. That's probably the most straightforward method.
In six months or so Apple will be bringing out the next version of their operating system called "Leopard". One of its main attractions is an automatic back-up system that also includes the ability to go back in time to find files etc that have been lost/damaged etc. This facility is called "Time Machine" and you'll need an external hard drive to make use of it.
My own method at present: I use two external hard drives and back-up most files to one of them occasionally, but anything reasonably important I back up to both more promptly. I prefer to do this manually rather than automatically.
For very important files, I also back them up off-site, that is, remotely on the Internet. The reason is that if your back-up hard drive is physically close to the computer then they can potentially suffer the same fate, e.g. being stolen or damaged in a fire etc and then you lose both.
Some things to maybe take into account when devising a personal back-system:
• Personal mistakes (e.g. accidentally trashing a file)
• File corruption
• Incompetent or malicious person uses the computer in your absence
• Viruses etc (not a problem for Macs now, but maybe in the future)
• Mechanical failure of hard drive
• Theft
• Fire or other catastrophic damage to building.
In many years of using computers all of my losses have been down to the first two items on the list.
Incidentally, it can be risky to have a simple automated system which, say, backs up everything at the end of the day and overwrites the previous day's back-up. In this case if a file has become corrupted and you don't realize it the file in your back-up will become the corrupted version too. It can be useful to keep some older back-ups, maybe sometimes on a CD or DVD.

Macbook Pro 13' freezes for 10 secs and hard drives clicks

Hi all,
I recently purchased a macbook pro 13" and it has started to make clicking noises every now and again (but it doesn't beep). The mac is also starting to freeze for about 5-10secs and then returning to normal.
The hard drive inside the macbook pro is a 160GB model.
Does anyone know why this is happening and how i can solve it?
Many thanks

Contact Apple. It sounds like a hard drive issue. It may need to be replaced.
Dave M.
MacOSG Founder/Ambassador  An Apple User Group  iTunes: MacOSG Podcast
Macsimum News Associate Editor  Creator of 'Mac611 - Mobile Mac Support'

External hard drive clicking and not recognized by mac will DiskWarrior work?

First of all apologizes if I've posted in the wrong community I couldn't find one that really fit my particular query.
I'll give a quick rundown of what happened and see if anyone can help or suggest a course of action. My Seagate External HDD model SRD0SP0 was mounted to my 2013 MacBook Air when it started to make a loud noise freezing the computer and requiring me to force shutdown the entire system. I immediately rebooted the computer and it started up again fine but when I tried plugging in the drive to the USB it would only spin and beep at regular intervals and then go quite. The drive did not mount to the desktop but I could see it in DiskUtility although the 'verify' and 'repair' options were greyed out. I tried to connect to a PC but it would not recognize the drive either. I left the drive alone for a few months and now when I plug it in it starts to fire up with the whirl sound but that is quickly followed by 5 faint ticks followed by a louder click. It almost sounds like something is dragging and the click is it coming to an end before starting up again. (I have a .m4a recording of the this but I don't see an option to upload) This goes on for about 20 seconds and then a window pops up saying something along the lines of 'this disk is not recognized by this computer' and the options to 'initialize' 'ignore' or 'eject'. I have only ever clicked eject. As before the drive is visible in DiskUtility but the options are greyed out.
I contacted a data recovery agency and their response was:
I would recommend to remove bare drive from the External casing and connect it to a computer directly or via another USB enclosure. If the drive is internally fine you should be able to see and copy the files. If you still get the same symptoms then your clicking hard drive most likely has internal problem with read/write heads and needs head assembly swapped from a donor. It's a very serious problem and recovery procedure in this case requires a lot of experience, use of class 100 clean room and specialized equipment.
If stored files are not particularly important you should replace the hard drive. If you need data from the drive we could recover it for $950 USD.
At this time I am not comfortable taking my drive apart and I can not afford close to 1k in repair costs. From my research on this forum I have seem multiple suggestions to try DiskWarrior but I am not sure that it will work with the problems that I am describing. Before I spend the money has anyone had a similar problem and had success recovering their data via DiskWarrior? Or do I have to resort to the data recovery agency or the freezer technique?

If the drive is making clicking sounds then it will probably fail. That's evidence of a mechanical issue. DW isn''t going to fix that nor will Disk Utility. Only replacing it with a new drive will fix it. While you can you should make a backup.

Why is my hard drive clicking?

i have a parrallels desktop installed on my mac. every time im using parallels theres a clicking noise coming from my hard drive. Why???

It's dying.
Common symptoms of a dying hard drive
Hard drive is making a clicking, whirring, grinding, ping pong ball noise or any other type of unusual noises.
Hard drive is not spinning.
Computer is not recognizing the hard drive.
Sluggish loading of applications.
System freezes and hangs.
An interesting site - Hard Drive Sounds by drive manufacturer.

Annoying: hard disc "clicking" sound, APM

Hi.
I have recently purchased a new hard disk for my MacBook4,1 - a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (Model: ST9500420AS). I made a clean install of Mac OS X 10.6 (putting the old disc aside), everything runs fine, but there's a random clicking sound from my new hdd that drives me crazy - even worse: sometimes there seems to be a small lag in program execution when this occurs (its hard to describe, the computer doesn't really "hang", but it's noticeable).
At first i thought the new drive was defective, but all S.M.A.R.T values were fine (except for one, i'll come to that), and the phenomenon vanishes when the hdd has something to do (copying large files etc.)
I searched the forums and found some clues that this noise is caused by the heads going into a parking position and the drive spinning down to save energy. Some S.M.A.R.T-values to point that out:
9 Power On Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always - 112
139 Load Cycle Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old age Always - 9442
This drive has done over 9k load cycles in 112 hrs, one every 43 seconds. As far as i know that's not supposed to happen. At least it's very annoying.
A discussion in this forum led me to the "hdapm"-tool (<http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/>) which thankfully still works under 10.6. I've installed it as a startup daemon:
Sep 3 23:12:23 probe hdapm[50]: disk0: ST9500420AS
Sep 3 23:12:23 probe hdapm[50]: Setting APM level to 0xfe:
Sep 3 23:12:23 probe hdapm[50]: Success
and the problem disappears. At least as long i don't go on battery-power or back to power adapter.
Is there a "real" solution to this problem? This can't be right, right? Some energy-saving would be nice, but more like "after 5 Minutes of inactivity", not every 43 seconds.
P.S. "Put the hard disc(s) to sleep when possible" has no effect on this behavior.
Thanks!

Thanks for the info but what is an External Hard drive Enclosure?
Hello,
Welcome to the Discussions.
If you have an external hard drive enclosure you may
be able to salvage the files on it.
I had the same situation with my mother-in-laws iMac
a few months ago. I removed the HD and put it in the
freezer for 20-30 minutes and then into the external
enclosure. I recovered most of the data before it
quit working and then repeated the process to recover
the rest of the data. If the freezer doesn't do it,
try a warm (150˚F or so) oven. Once the data is
recovered, throw the drive away...it's dead.
John

Hard drive click... sudden motion sensor?

whenever i carry my macbook, the hard drive makes a clicking sound. Is this the sudden motion sensor?

Yes. Depending on what you mean by "carry", you should probably put it to sleep or turn it off when moving it.

Why is my hard drive clicking when idle?

It seems this only happens in Lightroom. There is a constant click, like a hard drive head seek, once a second. I don't have Lightroom doing anything in the background like building thumbnails, but instead is just sitting idle there for hours. When I close LR, it stops imediately.
It has been doing this in LR since I can remember, like maybe years.
It's mildly annoying, and moderately worrying that my HD is getting extra wear and tear. Anyone else notice this, or have an idea why it's happening?
Thanks!

LR is hard on disks because it uses them a lot, more or less constantly (rather than at the end when saving as something like PS does, or only when rendering as with a Video editing application). It is reading and writing to the disk where the catalog and previews are and when in develop mode also to wherever the cache is located. If you also have write xmp to file selected it is writing to the disk they are located to as well.
Unfortunately you cannot separate the previews from the catalog, but everything else can be split onto different disks which both speeds up things generally as well as giving less wear to your disks.
If you can hear a disk over the sound of your cooling, unless you have a water cooled system you most likley have hot hard drives (or maybe not enough cooling fans, or both). Hard drives running at much more than room temperature fail quickly. Anything over 35 C and they fail very quickly. Clicking usually means that yet another location on the drive is being written off. eventually this will lead to failure. To much movement of the heads means a fragmented drive and/or one with too little free space. For an aplication like LR I would always want at least 25 % or more free disk space wherever the catalog is located.
Any noise from a hard drive, other than the start up whine that sometimes comes with some drives after they have been shut down completly, is bad news. I would run whatever checks are available on your OS first, although Windows checks are not that good. CPUID HW Monitor is free and will give you a good idea of the temperatures your disks are running at as long as SMART is enabled in the BIOS. If one drive is running a lot hotter than other then that will be the problem one.
HDD Regenerator claims to be able to regenerate disks. You can download a free trail. I am not at all sure about its claims to fix drives, but in trial mode it will soon show where the problems are and can be run within windows.
I have lots of drives on my systems as I also do some video editing as wekll as stills. I have experienced lots of drives going bad over the years. The one investment I made last year that certainly imporves drive read times and hopefully will delay drive failures (as well as good cooling) was a copy of Diskeeper. This constantly defrags drives in the background and hardly uses any RAM or CPU time to do it, an excellent aplication for anybody running lots of hard drives on a windows based box.
You can find the apps I have mentioned with a quick google.

Thinkpad x100e Hard Drive Clicking Sound

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