fujitsu 160GB HD ticking noises in Vaio FE11S

[craigm]

What do the values mean at all?

Is my harddisk destroying itself so continuous usage will lead to its
death?

What I noticed in the past hours while some harddisk tests:
If the harddisk is under full load it does not click and it does not
interrupt the load procedure to click/calibrate. But if it is idle it
begins to click again.

Is there any chance you have set the power saving mode on your computer to
park the heads on the drive after 1 second or two idle time? This would
cause a lot of clicking under some usage patterns.

Try turning off all power saving modes and see if it continues.

 

[BaniPani]

I ran SMART self tests with HDDScan[1]
- Short selftest: without errors
- Extended selftest: without errors

Then I disabled the automatic acoustic management, rebooted and th
clicking was gone. I worked about half an hour, but the harddisk wa
very noisy (compared to the state before). So I enabled the automati
acoustic management again, rebooted and the clicking did not com
back. I'm really happy, but I think it will occur again within th
next days. We will see

Thanks for your support

[1] http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan

 

[Rod Speed]

I ran SMART self tests with HDDScan[1]:
- Short selftest: without errors.
- Extended selftest: without errors.

Then I disabled the automatic acoustic management, rebooted and the
clicking was gone. I worked about half an hour, but the harddisk was
very noisy (compared to the state before). So I enabled the automatic
acoustic management again, rebooted and the clicking did not come
back. I'm really happy, but I think it will occur again within the next days.

Yeah, bet it will.

We will see.

Please report back.

Thanks for your support!

[1] http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan/

 

[BaniPani]

I want to give you a status report. Probably someone can help me now
(Remember: I talk a about my Sony Vaio FE21S notebook with the Fujits
MHV2160BT harddisk

The ticking noise still occurs sometimes. I do not know the reason wh
it starts nor do I even have an idea

In a previous post I said disabling the Acoustic Sound Management (o
the hdd) would help. I was wrong. It does not help

The temperature of the hdd is always at 39°C (102°F) what i
absolutely okay I think. So it is not causing the problem

Often I can work without the noise for days and sometimes I boot m
notebook and after a few hours it begins. What really nerves is th
periodical delay in read and write commands. The command has to wai
until the tick was performed

I stopped the time between to ticking noises. It varies between 5 se
to 30 sec in about n*5 secs (+-1 sec). So it can be 2*5+1=11sec fro
one tick to another one or 26sec or 4 sec etc. Ticks with times othe
than described with the formular do not occur (not in my test within
min). If there is someone passionate about the formular it is in fac
only n*5 I think, because I can not precisely stop the time. Th
period of time between two ticks lies very often under 15 sec

As you can see there is a pattern. What function ha
this kind of pattern

 

[Rod Speed]

I want to give you a status report. Probably someone can help me now.
(Remember: I talk a about my Sony Vaio FE21S notebook with the Fujitsu
MHV2160BT harddisk)

The ticking noise still occurs sometimes. I do not know the reason why
it starts nor do I even have an idea.

In a previous post I said disabling the Acoustic Sound Management (of
the hdd) would help. I was wrong. It does not help.

The temperature of the hdd is always at 39°C (102°F) what is
absolutely okay I think. So it is not causing the problem.

Often I can work without the noise for days and sometimes I boot my
notebook and after a few hours it begins. What really nerves is the
periodical delay in read and write commands. The command has to wait
until the tick was performed.

I stopped the time between to ticking noises. It varies between 5 sec
to 30 sec in about n*5 secs (+-1 sec). So it can be 2*5+1=11sec from
one tick to another one or 26sec or 4 sec etc. Ticks with times other
than described with the formular do not occur (not in my test within 5
min). If there is someone passionate about the formular it is in fact
only n*5 I think, because I can not precisely stop the time. The
period of time between two ticks lies very often under 15 sec.

As you can see there is a pattern. What function has
this kind of pattern?

I'd run some long SMART tests with smartctl
to see if the drive is intermittently flakey.

 

[ndros]

Sorry for not attending the thread for a while, I was kind of disappointed
with the issue.

@BaniPani, I contacted Sony and their technical stuff advised me to send
my Vaio over to France for disk replacement. I got my notebook with the
new disk (same model) back after one week, but on the second day after
that the ticking started again. I can also confirm that the ticking
occurs only during disk inactivity, at relatively sparse intervals (may
not bother me for weeks), but is quite persistent whenever it appears
(only disappears at shutdown).

The most frustrating part is that after all this investigation I am
still not sure as to what causes this incident and, most importantly,
whether it will eventually lead to disk failure :-( Either that I am
extremely unlucky or -most probably- it is a common feature of all these
fujitsu drives, and not some faulty part as Sony led me to believe. Also,
I personally suspect that these high SMART values worrying Rod are merely
misinterpreted by the software. I ran both Everest and smartctl against
the new drive and got all these absurdly high values for a disk with a
total lifetime less than 10 hours.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

The SMART test results for my Fujitsu MHV2160BT harddisk:

ID Attribute Description Thresh. Value Worst Data Status []
07 Seek Error Rate 47 100 100 2956 OK: Value is normal

I dont like this one.
[]

C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 442368000 OK: Always passing

Or this one either.
[]

C8 Write Error Rate 60 100 100 32248 OK: Value is normal

Or this one either.
[]

While some have claimed that just because you see those 100 values
on those questionable lines, that doesnt explain why the drive is clicking.
I expect its because the drive is being much too conservative about
those 100 values and the drive does have a problem.

A big thanks in advance for trying to help me.
I think it got rapidly worse from yesterday to today.

When the "click" occurs and something is loading from the harddisk
the load procedure stops for milliseconds until the "click" is over.

Yeah, thats the drive recalibrating and eventually getting
the data off the platters. Thats the reason for the delay.

I'd personally replace the drive

and I'd bet that those dubious values are then fine with the replacement drive.

You loose.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Sorry for not attending the thread for a while, I was kind of disappointed
with the issue.

@BaniPani, I contacted Sony and their technical stuff advised me to send
my Vaio over to France for disk replacement. I got my notebook with the
new disk (same model) back after one week, but on the second day after
that the ticking started again. I can also confirm that the ticking
occurs only during disk inactivity, at relatively sparse intervals (may
not bother me for weeks), but is quite persistent whenever it appears
(only disappears at shutdown).

The most frustrating part is that after all this investigation I am
still not sure as to what causes this incident and, most importantly,
whether it will eventually lead to disk failure :-( Either that I am
extremely unlucky or

-most probably- it is a common feature of all these fujitsu drives,
and not some faulty part as Sony led me to believe.

Quite likely. Sometimes it are just extra features of the drives that
you don't suspect them to have, playing havoc with expectations.

Also, I personally suspect that these high SMART values worrying Rod

Roddles never could get SMART reports right.

are merely misinterpreted by the software.

Unless it did something particular for Fujitsu drives that doesn't
apply any longer, that is not likely. More likely it should do some
extra interpreting particular to Fujitsu Laptop drives -that it isn't
doing- that is the problem.

I ran both Everest and smartctl against the new drive and got all
these absurdly high values for a disk with a total lifetime less
than 10 hours.

Which says that it isn't the programs fault.