My HD make a loud bang noise! 2

[Thruthbetold]

I have been hearing this loud clank noise with the Hard Drives with our Laptops, it happens very now and then. Sometimes I will hear the computers make a low sounding internal deep when the HD clank routine. We have a small home network and we are using Win XP home. The network has Dell, Compaq, and HP laptops connected at one time or another.
I am concerned that there maybe a virus infecting these computers and is trying to distory the HD. I have done a thorough virus scan with Norton Antivirus, it has found nothing.
The laptops do not have to be networked for the HD clank to happen. This HD clanking has been going on for a long time with my Compaq, I thought it was normal. But when I recently got my Dell laptop, it too would make the same loud clank sound and internal deep sound.
It just did it now with the system beep while writing this post! It has done it twice during the past 15 minutes now.

Any ideas?

 

[LanLanLan]

Hmm... do not panic now. Make images of your drives immediately if you can. I just lost a drive because of a head crash,it never warned me except it had some bad blocks... an IBM Deskstar.

I was able to boot once since the slamming started, too late because I didn´t know which drive was making the noise.

Good luck! (Yes,they don´t make drives like they used to do.)

 

[Thruthbetold]

I want to know why its doing this. All of my laptops hard drives will make a loud clank or bang noise every now and then. I had them all networked together one time of another, could it be a virus? I have run a full scan using Norton Anti-virus on all of the computers and found nothing.

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

One suggestion that i have been making to all my customers is that good surge protection is a must but recently i have upgraded that now to suggesting not only surge protection but also battery backups, it seems to be a problem more and more with the new system of wanting constant direct power and i truely believe that alot of system failures good be explaine inconsistant power surges and brown outs. might be something worth checking into the newer harddrives rpm's are almost double what the use to be and when they are churning away and all of a sudden you get a 10-20 voltage drop it can cause problems

 

[CeltOne]

In general buzzes clunks whirs and thunks are not a failure indication on a HDD. That's the good news. The BAD new is the CLANK is only caused by metal to "HARD SURFACE" Contact. The problem is even more severe if is is a repeating clank. The advice previously given is appropriate except that I would NOT advise you to ignore the symptom AT ALL.
1. ****** Back Up your data IMMEDIATLY ******
2. If possible verify that your power is steady ( Rapidly changing rotations can cause components to flex resulting in the noise)
3. Listen again. You describe it as a clank, is it really metal to metal contact or is it a different sort of noise. The words clank etc. are subjective. If the involved units are under Mfg Warranty have an experienced technician listen to them over the phone. It would be worth paying for even if your warranty has expired. This is CRITICAL.
4. Note if possible the operations that accompany this noise. For example "Opening a MS Word 97 document".
5. Run scandisk with the "Atomatically fix errors" box UNCHECKED. If you are having problems with the surface this should clue you in. If you do not receive bad sector errors you are probably hearing your heads hitting a mechanical stop or, the drive shifting in the case due to torque. I would also advise using a second anti-virus package to verify the result of the first. It is possible for some viruses to "corrupt" the AV responses.

 

[Thruthbetold]

I only hear this noise on my laptops. I have never heard this noise on my desktop before. I update my antivirus program regularly. As to the Welcomeback’s Toshiba laptop’s hard drive noise, this make me think that its not a virus. Maybe it’s a bug in windows XP, does your Toshiba laptops have XP installed.

Is there anyone else hearing a HD clunk noise on their laptop with an operating system other than windows XP?

In response to Celtone, you asked if I heard a clank or a clunk. Its more of a clunk. At times the clunk is very loud. The sound usually happens when I'm typing or reading a page and it sometimes happenes while programs are loading. But I do not think it was caused by the programs its self.

I am going to call the Dell tech guys and see if they know anything about it.

 

[dydavid]

Hard Drives do not clank - period, not in normal operation. If you get this, immediately backup your data - I would recommend Norton Ghost 2003 - which backs up to USB Drives such as Iomega - which has a generous rebate going to the end of March 2003. The full backup can be restored to a new drive with all applications, email, etc. intact in perfect condition.

Drives fail as a matter of course - not a matter of "if the drive fails", but a "matter of when it fails".

Check with your computer manufacturers and see if there any recalls, esp. on the Hard Drives. Also check the Hard Drive Mfrs. Check the warranty. A drive replacement is cheap compared to lost data? Can you afford to lose your data?

You can use Belarc Advisor - free download -

http://www.belarc.com

for system info including the hard drive & mfr / model.

Viruses don't cause drive noises typically - I have debugged over 15 systems with viruses. They can erase data.

 

[dydavid]

What is happening now? Clanks may indicate an environmental problem - vibrations, or marine environment, bad electrical quality, or EMF or RF intensity. Where are you located (approx.)? Town?

Anyway, do vibration isolation and strong cooling effort. Laptops are notorious for heat dissipation problems. Prop them up and blow fans under them.

What do the mfr tech support tell you? Again, I stress, back up your PC's immediately ---- have you done this?

 

[Thruthbetold]

Yes I have backed up my HD. I did not call the tech guys yet as I didn't get the time.

Anyway you maybe onto something about the heat, I have not heard the clunk noise when the computer was cool. I'll ask the tech guys at dell about that when I call them.

As to EMF or RF I don't think thats it. The Hard drive has clunked while using just the battery and when plugged in using AC.

 

[Thruthbetold]

I contacted Dell tech support. they don't know anything. the guy tells me to get the lastest bios for the HD controller. I tell him I have the last bios, he then says take out the HD and look for lose parts! I need to contact the Hard drive manufactor.

 

[fujisan]

Thought I was the only one who had this problem, I have a brand new Fujitsu Siemens S series laptop, with Fujitsu branded hard drive, with I think the same problem, although mine seems to get worse after Ive opened explorer, or loaded an app, when I do this every 2 seconds I get a what I can only describe as a "ratle, ratle CLANK" like the heads keep parking, this goes on and on for a while and then slows down until the odd "ratle,ratle CLANK" can be heard every now and again. Its become so annoying I have to have some loud music in the background so I dont throw the thing out of the window !!! and YES I run Windows XP pro as supplied with the machine.

 

[fujisan]

Just got some intresting info about laptop hard drives after doing a search in google groups for "windows xp hard drive clunk" It appears some hard disks, and Dell was mentioned in one of the posts that some drives it is normal for the disk to go into power save mode to save laptop battery and on some drives park the heads on load and unload,what looks like my Fujitsu drive keep parking the head after every access. With Dell a cirtian brand of Hitachi drive was mentioned for doing this and there was a firmware update Dell and Hitachi released a while ago, unfortunatley the links are no longer there from the original post. See the following post I found on Dell`s forum

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...rddrive&message.id=7175&highlight=clunk#M7175

 

[Thruthbetold]

Thank you Fujisan. I you described the sound yours and my HD makes, " ratle ratle clank, ratle ratle clunk!". I have noticed that my Dell laptop does make the clunk noise alot more than my compaq presario notebook. Both computers use Hitachi brand hard drives. My dell uses the Hitachi DK23A. I will look at the posted message link and do a search for the firmware undate. Thank you.

 

[Thruthbetold]

Thanks to Fujisan's post for the following link:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...rddrive&message.id=7175&highlight=clunk#M7175

I now know more why my laptop HD clanks and clunks. It is the parking of the read/write heads. It has something to do with the power saving features of laptop hard drives. In the link posted above the message board lists the hard drive manufactors that are the loudest. The Hitachi DK23CA was listed as the worst one, which is the exact model I have.
Just to be safe though, I will keep a current backup of my HD.