PC hardware forum: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises

Thanks for your reply to my dilemma, Brent. However, I'm more concerned about whether the loud noises are an indication of malfunctioning HDs rather than surpressing the noises.

Have you had any prior experience(s) with Maxtor drives exhibiting loud clicking sounds? Is it the nature of their hard drives?

The situation is not very encouraging at all, as HDD Health, the hard disk monitoring application on my pc, shows a bad reading (-2) for Seek Time Performance including a -59 reading for an Unknown Attribute, resulting in a T.E.C. date of 2/16/2005, which means eminent HD failure sometime very soon.

Late or not, a reply is always a welcome thing around here.

From my experience, WD (Western Digital) and Maxtor have been great drives during the pre-2Gb days. After that, Seagate took over the reliability contest.

Nowadays, I wouldn't use Maxtor(worst), IBM (terrible), and WD (bad) in any of my units. These three would give out those clacking sounds, which are an indicative that the drive is about to fail (even when new).

My 20GB Seagates though 4 years old still work, though do become slooooow with age. At least they're not clacking! I change them when I notice a degradation in speed. No data loss in most of them though, unlike data loss all the time in the other three brands due to total failure when you least expect it.

I'm trying out the new Samsung drive in one of my unit. Samsung do make reliable products, and I'm betting this drive would be pretty good. I could be wrong though, LOL. We'll see in a couple of years...

I recently bought a Maxtor 200 GB HD too and found to be quite noisy, i have searched and found the AMSET Acoustic Management Utility and info on it here http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=1200

Hi - just found your post and would like to reduce the amount of noise coming from my Maxtor - SETACM.exe doesn't really seem to be supported from the Maxtor site therefore I am wondering whether it will work for my SATA drive?

slight noise on boot only.

Harv it could be a fan noise?

have you cleaned them out?

return maxtor drives! they have had a real bad run of them!

There really shouldn't be any loud clicking...I'd return them.

Grif

ya... in my dell inspiron 2650 whenever i boot up my computer it makes a clicking or beeping noise... pretty lowd too, but i think its only been doing that since i opened up my computer to replace the keyboard...
if anybody can help me too! please!

i wouldn't bother placing too much faith in Panterasoft's HDD Health program's T.E.C. dates as they tend to change. If you uninstall the application then reboot and reinstall you will normally discover the date has changed.

The manufacturer's hard drive utility is most generally a better and more reliable indicator of drive "health".

I have several Maxtors and for me they are all silent. For others who sit at my computers however the drives are invariably noisy and "make strange clunking sounds". The difference? I can't hear nearly as well as most people. All of my Maxtors have been making the same sounds for their entire lives and are still going strong. 7200 rpm drives do tend to be noisier than 5400 rpm drives.

Vibrations caused by the specific manner in which the drive is mounted can make a difference in sound level also.

Sometimes the Acoustic Management Utility (AMSET and it can be accessed here http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=1200 ) will help if the noise level is bothersome.

This management tool for IBM will work on Maxtors too:
http://ftp.uevora.pt/pub/Windrivers/Harddisk%20ATA66/IBM/

The noise most people complain about is the SEEK noise and not the drive bearings as they fear.

I have a 160GB and an 80GB maxtor in my system both making a loud fast clicking sound much like a geiger counter. I had a frend tell me that maxtor drives were loud so I put this down to being the price you pay for a cheap drive, however having thought about it after reading this post I think you may be onto something with the drives being deffective.

In my home there are 3 other systems using maxtor drives 2 only use 40GB drives so I put the lack of noise down to them being so small, but the other uses an 80GB and there is never any noise coming from it. However

I would not worry to much about it if I were you I've had my PC for 2 years and the the 80GB the whole time, its never failed me (except when I murdered my MBR with Linux but thats another story and wasn't too difficult to fix, thank god for FDISK) anyway the 160GB is only 6 months old and still covered under warranty so it it fails I'll get my money back. I would recommend getting another manufacturers drive and maybe pay a little more, it'll be worth it in the end.

Maxtor is to Sony as Gola is to Nike (dont worry if you dont know what gola is thats the point)

This was also my first thought when I heard about this problem.

A defective or under-powered power supply can cause all kind of odd problems in a PC - from HD problems to video card problems.

Three failed hard drives in a row is just too much of a coincidence.

~Ken

I bought and installed a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160Gb drive last week. I've actually removed it and repackaged it to send back to the vendor for testing because the seek noise was so loud. Describing it as a geiger counter is an excellent description.

Its noise while idle is perfectly acceptable but its noise when performing any operation was so similar to that you'd get from a knackered old PC that I was very worried I'd got a defective product.

Is there any point in my sending it back if this type of loud clicking is just normal for Maxtor's seek noise?

p.s. It's extra obvious to me because I've put it in a SFF cube pc...

So these guys go and download the AMSET utility, which changes the parameters of the seek travel in the drive so it no longers slams into the stops at the end of the travel or reduces the speed of the motion slightly so the noise is less noticeable. Seems to me the manufacturer should have made the drive quiet to begin with. I have a WD 120GB hd and not only can I just barely hear it running, but the only time I even hear it seeking is when it is really looking hard for something, like during a search. The sound it makes is like a geiger counter, but it is so quiet you actually have to have your ear close to the tower to hear it at all.