• Is my hard drive failing?
    18 replies, posted
Up until today, everything has been going smoothly. But suddenly I decided that I wanted to install Ubuntu! What a great idea! The installation itself went extremely smoothly, but upon restarting I was greeting with something a bit horrifying. Once my computer reached the Ubuntu boot screen, my hard drive started making a horrible "Click Click Whoosh" or "Click Click Whirrr" kind of noise. I automatically assumed that my hard drive was fucked, but just for fun, I unplugged the SATA cable. To my surprise, once I plugged it back in, Ubuntu booted smoothly and has been running fine. Now, I don't exactly find it convenient to have to open my case every time I want to boot, but should my hard drive be replaced? Edit: Note that I have to do the plug routine every time I boot. It starts the noise as soon as the Ubuntu splash appears, and doesn't go away until I do that.
I really recommend you to atleast backup your files. You never know when harddisks fail.
There's nothing important on the drive, especially considering I just did a full reformat for Ubuntu, but I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on.
Run a SMART test
A short SMART test passed with all OK, and the clicking issue persisted with another restart.
It could have been a loose connector, or a BIOS hiccup. I would still back up anything important, at least until you can run a full SMART scan.
[QUOTE=demonguard;21196851]Up until today, everything has been going smoothly. But suddenly I decided that I wanted to install Ubuntu! What a great idea! The installation itself went extremely smoothly, but upon restarting I was greeting with something a bit horrifying. Once my computer reached the Ubuntu boot screen, my hard drive started making a horrible "Click Click Whoosh" or "Click Click Whirrr" kind of noise. I automatically assumed that my hard drive was fucked, but just for fun, I unplugged the SATA cable. To my surprise, once I plugged it back in, Ubuntu booted smoothly and has been running fine. Now, I don't exactly find it convenient to have to open my case every time I want to boot, but should my hard drive be replaced?[/QUOTE] big woop your harddisk went click click
It does it every time I boot and won't stop/continue booting until I unplug and plug back in the SATA cable.
Does it only click on the Ubuntu partition? And is the partition at the end of the disk?
Ubuntu is the only partition that I have now, and it's at the beginning of the disk.
I wouldn't worry about it. Mine clicks sometimes too. What brand is your HDD?
It's an old WD. It's not really the click that bothers me, it's the fact that I have to unplug it for a second every time I turn on my computer.
If you are paranoid about it, just RMA it
[QUOTE=demonguard;21201762]It's an old WD. It's not really the click that bothers me, it's the fact that I have to unplug it for a second every time I turn on my computer.[/QUOTE] I have heard that putting a hard drive in the freezer for a short while helps it idk how but if you were to do that put it in a bag that has no air in it to avoid condensation.
I don't care if the hard drive fails, and I'm not paranoid about losing my data. I could care less if it just completely quit working. I was just wondering if anyone had ever heard of a problem before that would cause me to have to unplug it every time I boot.
[QUOTE=sbradford26;21202089]I have heard that putting a hard drive in the freezer for a short while helps it idk how but if you were to do that put it in a bag that has no air in it to avoid condensation.[/QUOTE] or let it warm up before you use it again... as for the clicking noise, i'd consider replacing the drive. last i heard SATA is supposedly hot-swappable, like USB, so it won't hurt much to do that except for the whole thing about the computer accessing the drive when you do that (might corrupt your OS and you'd have to reinstall). other than that, i wouldn't be worried terribly.
Is it the only hard drive? Are the jumpers set for master? And check the bios to see if it set as master. [editline]12:02AM[/editline] [QUOTE=sbradford26;21202089]I have heard that putting a hard drive in the freezer for a short while helps it idk how but if you were to do that put it in a bag that has no air in it to avoid condensation.[/QUOTE] Sometimes there will be loose connections inside a hard drive and putting it in a freezer makes it cold (:downsclap:) which make the plastic shrink and when it heats up they un shrink therefore sometimes fixing internal problems on it's own.
I went ahead and picked up a 1tb HDD at Best Buy today, no problems with it. When the old WD is used for a secondary storage drive, it has no issues. The problem occurs only when you try to boot from it. Oh well though, doesn't matter now.
Grab a copy of Spinrite, it'll test for bad sectors and seek errors. Just boot to it and run the test.
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