A hard drive is CLICKING

ID:183702
 
May 15 2007, 6:49 pm
The thing is, all my drives are working fine, and I have four drives! I have no idea which one is ticking!


Can anyone help me find which one it is?

Thanks

~Kujila
May 15 2007, 7:00 pm
Figure out which one it is, and quick. Back up all the data from it, to make sure there are no accidents. A hard-drive clicking normally means it is turning off, normally due to hardware issues. You can try "chkdsk"ing all your drives, which might point out the culprit, but you can have bad sectors/corrupt data on good hard-drives, so don't assume things in chkdsk means that it is the bad drive. I recommend backing up anything important to all 4 drives at once. That way any one of them can die, and you have 3 usable copies left.
May 15 2007, 7:44 pm
Open up the case and move your ear and up down, listening carefully to changes in volume?

Alternatively you could turn the computer off and unplug the power cables from hard drives one at a time. When the ticking stops, you've found the problem drive...
May 15 2007, 11:18 pm
In response to Crispy
Crispy's solutions are what came to my mind as well. Best to figure out the hard way (get it? rather than using software? har.) and make sure you don't lose the data on that drive.

While you're thinking about possible hardware failure, perhaps it is a good time to pause and back up all of your important files. You should be keeping backups even when your drive are (apparently) working fine, of course.
May 16 2007, 4:34 am
In response to Danial.Beta
Danial.Beta wrote:
Figure out which one it is, and quick. Back up all the data from it, to make sure there are no accidents. A hard-drive clicking normally means it is turning off, normally due to hardware issues. You can try "chkdsk"ing all your drives, which might point out the culprit, but you can have bad sectors/corrupt data on good hard-drives, so don't assume things in chkdsk means that it is the bad drive. I recommend backing up anything important to all 4 drives at once. That way any one of them can die, and you have 3 usable copies left.

Good point, but you might even just wanna make sure all of the plugs are in firmly. Power failure in a hard drive can screw it up even if it was fine before. Corrupt data it will also lead to so yes back it up before anything really goes wrong. I recomend getting a new one or getting this one checked out fast.