[SATLUG] bad hd?

[Brad Knowles]

On 12/26/07, Alex Bartonek wrote:

>  I bought a new Western Digital 500gig SATA hd
>  WD5000AAJS.  I sometimes hear a "clicking" type sound
>  but it passes its tests w/the WD Diag software.

There is frequently clicking when the drive is going through the 
"load heads" procedure.  This involves moving the armature into 
starting position from the safe landing zone, moving the heads down 
towards the platter to the appropriate distance, and then maybe some 
additional clicking as the heads settle and the drive finds the servo 
tracks.  Once the servo tracks are located, then the heads have been 
loaded and you can proceed with the other operations.

Clicking during normal operations is less common.

>  Usually if a HD would click you'd notice slowdowns
>  when reading/writing so I'm assuming this isnt the
>  click of death?  Should I send it back just in case or
>  are these things normally like this?

I'd do some careful research on your particular drive model to see if 
it commonly suffers from the "click of death" phenomenon.  The 
clicking you're hearing may be harmless, although perhaps annoying.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>