Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 07:39:59 -0700 From: Ben Lovett <blovett@bsdguru.com> To: Bob Johnson <bobj@ufl.edu> Cc: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Disk clicking... (Was: Re: Dell Inspiron 8000 and suspend-to-disk) Message-ID: <20010715073959.A99778@bsdguru.com> In-Reply-To: <3B513A35.F0F32B9B@ufl.edu>; from bobj@ufl.edu on Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 02:37:41AM -0400 References: <20010703101035.A1027@bsdguru.com> <3B433888.7020304@quack.kfu.com> <3B4353BE.927522EF@ufl.edu> <20010704210528.A691@bsdguru.com> <20010707045013.A1368@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com> <20010714125947.A7983@bsdguru.com> <3B513A35.F0F32B9B@ufl.edu>
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Bob Johnson (bobj@ufl.edu) wrote:
> Ben Lovett wrote:
> >
> > I believe I saw Greg Lehey (grog@FreeBSD.ORG) write this:
> > > On Wednesday, 4 July 2001 at 21:05:28 -0700, Ben Lovett wrote:
> > > > I believe I saw Bob Johnson (bobj@ufl.edu) write this:
> > > >> Nick Sayer wrote:
> > > >>> Ben Lovett wrote:
> > > >>
> [...]
> > > > I believe this is the reason behind some strange noises that I hear
> > > > comming from my disk every once in a while. It sounds like one of
> > > > the heads is moving rather abruptly, or something like that.
> > >
> > > Well, the heads all move together.
> > ok..
> > >
> > > > Has anyone else noticed similar behaviour on Dell i8k's built as of
> > > > late?
> > >
> > > A lot of us noticed "clunk" noises from the disks of 7500s built
> > > between 12 and 18 months ago. I had mine replaced as a result, and
> > > the new disk has never made any noise. Mike Smith didn't have his
> > > replaced, and the disk still goes "clunk" after 18 months, but he
> > > doesn't have any other problems with it.
> >
>
> My 7500 makes what you might call "clicks" or "clunks" when it does
> what sound to me like long seeks. I've heard it from so many drives
> that I consider it normal. My mother-in-law's laptop had a horribly
> noisy and slow drive that she thought was failing -- it was merely a
> highly fragmented Windows swap file. Cleaned that up and the system
> got quiet and fast again (isn't that neat? Windows is actually
> designed to get slower with use!).
>
> When doing most disk-intensive operations on this 7500 (e.g. deleting
> /usr/obj) it is very quiet, but during normal operation it clicks
> and clunks once in a while. I've always assumed that was a long seek
> related to flushing a buffer or something. Long seeks tend to be
> (in my experience) relatively noisy on many drives.
Yes.. This is what I seem to notice. The funny thing is, I don't
believe i've heard it when the system is booted into Windows..
>
> > Well.. I guess that I am observing this behavior on my replacement disk,
> > I'll live with it. Unless I hear different.
> >
> > On a sort of side note.. I was discussing this issue with my boss
> > yesterday, and he was explaining to me that when hard drives are
> > manufactured, because of the nature of the mass-production, the platters
> > will never turn out without flaws, and thus will have some bad sectors.
> > So, when the drives go through their low-level formatting at the
> > factory, those sectors will be marked as "bad" on some part of the
> > drive. He was telling me that the reason that the drive may be clicking
> > is that the heads are comming across one of these sectors that is marked
> > bad, when it thought there was data there (or something to that effect),
> > and then resyncing itself. Does that make sense? I believe that is
> > what he was saying.
>
> A sector mapped bad shouldn't be accessed in the first place, but
> it sort of makes sense. My understanding is that when a SCSI drive
> (and probably recent IDE drives) detects errors in a sector, it maps
> out that sector and replaces it with one from a spare sector pool at
> the end of the disk. Thus, when that sector is accessed, there is a
> seek to the end of the disk which you might hear. I assume that
> sectors mapped bad at the factory are replaced by the next available
> sector, so there would be no seek involved. Thus, only newly bad sectors
> would cause noise.
Yes. That is what I remember now.. He mentioned something about a spare
sector pool, but I had forgotten about that until now. But, with a
brand new drive, there should be no newly created bad sectors...
Atleast not *yet*
-ben
>
>
> >
> > Thanks again..
> >
> > -ben
> > --
> > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> > Ben Lovett printf("Hello world!);
> > blovett@bsdguru.com return 0;
> > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> > If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
> > ...Oh, wait a minute, he already does.
> >
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