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Date:      Sun, 15 Jan 2006 03:06:04 -0800
From:      soralx@cydem.org
To:        freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Cc:        tpen0010@hotmail.com, bsdfan@nurfuerspam.de
Subject:   Re: hard drive noises -- western digital wd800ve
Message-ID:  <200601150306.04067.soralx@cydem.org>
In-Reply-To: <42EE531B.1060704@nurfuerspam.de>
References:  <BAY105-F20D53110A581298F94DE72C1C00@phx.gbl> <42EE531B.1060704@nurfuerspam.de>

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> Michael Roberts wrote:
> > i'm encountering something funny in a hard drive i just installed.
> > issue is: the hard drive makes clicking noises sometimes when the system
> > is trying to access the drive, and when that happens, there is a
> > momentary (half or quarter second) pause in whatever the computer was
> > trying to do.  e.g., if i type in a partial path in a terminal, then try
> > to tab-complete it, i hear a little tic-toc, accompanied by a pause,
> > before the completed path shows up in the terminal.
>
> I once had a IBM hard drive which made such a noise right from the
> beginning. According to the support people this was "normal" with that
> series of drives.

I've got a Seagate Cheetah (15000RPM) 18Gb SCSI HDD that makes seemingly
random ticking and clicking noises. The drive appears to be in good health,
though `camcontrol defects da1 -f phys -P|wc -l` shows 8191 lines
of factory defects!

In case somebody is still interested, I speculate that there are at least
2 reasons for such noises:

0. Motor bearings. The random, and quite audible, clicking noise may be
emitted by motor's ball bearings on high-RPM disks. This noise sounds
almost exactly like the bearing noise I hear in some aircraft gyro
rotors. I'm not sure of its origin, but I think that it may be caused
by dirt in bearings and/or bearings' race[s] surface[s] slipping over
the balls' surfaces. More bearing preload helps, but usually does not
eliminate the noise completely. These clinking sounds start to appear
after ~10kRPM (lower is not unusual), and appear more frequently with
increase in rotor's angular velocity. Lower quality bearing that are
becoming more common seem to have this problem. I consider such noisy
rotors still acceptable (they can be balanced, don't vibrate, although
always have some harmonics); some factory-overhauled instruments have
such noisy rotors too.

1. Louder ticking noise may be produced by some SCSI drives (esp. newer
ones) that have the feature to continuously scan for bad sectors when
idle, as a preventive measure.

> However, I finally persuaded my supplier to have this drive replaced
> with one from another vendor. I couldn't have a drive in my PC which
> brings me cold sweat every day.
>
> As the others I recommend smartmontools and perhaps do a check with some
> "drive fitness test" tools from WD.
>
> Markus

Timestamp: 0x43CA1E1B
[SorAlx]  http://cydem.org.ua/
ridin' VN1500-B2




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