Basically, a few days a go I got a new hard drive (seagate barracuda 500GB) and it clicks. I’m not sure if they are just the noise my hard drives makes anyway, or whether or not its a sign of a defective drive. They only make the noise when the hard drive is being accessed (starting up large programs like OopenOffice and F-spot, or when I’m scanning my music library in quod-libet.
I recorded the sounds to post (since I’m aware ‘clicking’ is a vague description of the sound) and they are [COLOR=“Red”]here and [COLOR=“Red”]here. (They are recorded in Ogg Vorbis, just so people know)
The first recording was taken inside the computer casing, and the second from outside (with a mobile phone, so the quality’s not great but they give you an idea of the noise my computers making)
As I said, is this a normal (if not healthy) sound form my hard drive to be making? Or should I back up quickly and get a replacement drive?
I have been advised to do a check using smartctl
sudo smartctl -Ha /dev/sdawhich turned up these results
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 family
Device Model: ST3500630AS
Serial Number: 9QG8H47C
Firmware Version: 3.AAD
User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Sun Sep 14 18:43:20 2008 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 430) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 163) minutes.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 109 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 22962292
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 093 093 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 28
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 060 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 1083480
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 41
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 29
187 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
189 Unknown_Attribute 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 060 058 045 Old_age Always - 672399400
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 040 042 000 Old_age Always - 40 (Lifetime Min/Max 0/19)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 079 067 000 Old_age Always - 158475246
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
202 TA_Increase_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
which turned up very high Raw_Read_Error_Rate, Seek_Error_Rate and Hardware_ECC_Recovered values. I was told this was hailing the death of my hard drive, but then someone else told me that seagates often show up these kinds of errors, and my drive could last for another 10 years (but it’d be best to keep a backup)
I’m just interested in another opinion from people more knowledgeable than I!
Thanks in advance,
Civ