Re: Strange clicking noise from my laptop hard drive
On 5/10/17 3:32 PM, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> Hi there.
>
> I managed to record it using my laptops built-in microphone.
>
> To those who would prefer a description:
> It starts fast and slows down. I opened the file with Audacity and determined
> the intervals to be 0.1, 0.3, 0.6, 10, 15 seconds, then it repeats.
>
> It sounds like some kind of protocol negotiation algorithm that requires a
> disk sync when the polling time doubles.
>
Its most likely the disk trying to read some bad sectors. It is trying to
access the bad sector by approaching it from different ends of the disk ...
that's where the whine sound comes from at different intervals. This is a bad
sign so get any important data off the drive NOW.
If the system lets you ... run 'smartctl -a /dev/sdx' (replace sdx with your
drive) (if command not found error then install package smartmontools) and look
for things like UDMA_CRC_Error_Count, Offline_Uncorrectable and
Reallocated_Sector_Ct that are high (might just be over zero). There may be
other messages that indicate drive errors. You could do a long self test
('smartctl -t long /dev/sdx') but that will only tell you where the errors are.
If you can get a copy of SystemRescueCd at http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/. It
is a live Linux repair disk that can do many things. It has utilities that can
retrieve files from a bad disk and more. This would give you a chance to mount
the drive and get the important data you need.
To attempt a repair I would boot the SystemRescueCd and run the command
'badblocks -svn /dev/sdx'. That is a non destructive read then write test and
would try to read the bad blocks and if successful then write them back giving
the drive a chance to relocate the bad sector(s). If this fails and you want to
try to fix the drive then try spinrite (from grc.com). It is a commercial
program but it does a deep scrubbing on the disk and has been able to restore
bad disks.
...bob
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