First off I want to say thank you so much creators of this program. Its a godsend for a hardware enthusiast like myself. It has saved me countless hundreds of dollars when I have had failing drives but using the method here: https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12784
Recently though a 4TB Exos that gets a lot of writes of mine started to make a sound that was one tone and then resume normal operation. Kind of like when a drive starts up or shuts down but more noticeable. The drive however under the overview and SMART tabs in HDS show green and indicate no bad or weak sectors and give the drive 100% health rating.
The OS on the drive would lock up when this happened and resume when the drive no longer was making the noise. At first I thought this was a form of the Cod or Click of Death but since SMART said all was fine I thought most likely not. So I ran a surface repair test just in-case and the test found 2 light yellow sectors on the disk and repaired them. I don't hear the sound anymore. That is unless I run another surface test then it makes it again but the system does not lock up anymore.
This leads me to TWO questions: 1) Is the SMART sensor "off" in the data its giving to HDS? 2) Should I be super worried that the drive is going to fail soon? Or would I have some time to save up some money to replace if the drives is going die soon?
Hard Drive making sound. NOT CoD (CLICK of Death). What is it?
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Vazul Macgyver
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- Joined: 2025.03.21. 03:02
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hdsentinel
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Re: Hard Drive making sound. NOT CoD (CLICK of Death). What is it?
Generally it is possible that the hard disk is making some sounds during idle (inactive) periods: the drive may perform internal self test which is automatically paused (when there is a real disk read/write command) and then resumed. Alone this does not indicate problems / failure.
Would be nice to know some more about the drive status, so I suggest to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, as then it is possible to check the actual situation. It would give an overview about the drive attributes and operating conditions.
> This leads me to TWO questions: 1) Is the SMART sensor "off" in the data its giving to HDS?
Generally problems may remain unnoticed (even for long time), so may not immediately appear in the S.M.A.R.T. attributes.
Please see for example: https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_case_bad_sectors.php
This is why (in addition to checking the S.M.A.R.T. status / health) it is always recommended to perform tests, exactly to reveal (and if required) stabilize the problems.
Please see: https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests
Probably there were some issue with the drive (even not yet recorded in the S.M.A.R.T. attributes), and the Disk Repair test (as you see) could detect, reveal and fix these.
> I don't hear the sound anymore. That is unless I run another surface test then it makes it again but the system does not lock up anymore.
Not sure, but there is good chance that the operating environment is not 100% stable: cables, connections and USB adapter/dock (not sure if used) may be in the background as they can frequently cause troubles you encountered.
Personally probably I'd use Disk menu -> Surface test -> Reinitialise Disk Surface as it is more "intensive" than the Disk Repair function in terms of stabilizing the drive status.
> 2) Should I be super worried that the drive is going to fail soon?
Without knowing the status, hard to say anything for sure. In addition to the Health, would be nice to see other values: for example the estimated remaining lifetime may indicate if the drive is near (or over) the designed lifetime and would be better to replace.
Also as mentioned, the operating environment plays an important role. If there is a problem there, then if you'd replace the drive, you may encounter similar (or even worse) situation.
Would be nice to know some more about the drive status, so I suggest to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, as then it is possible to check the actual situation. It would give an overview about the drive attributes and operating conditions.
> This leads me to TWO questions: 1) Is the SMART sensor "off" in the data its giving to HDS?
Generally problems may remain unnoticed (even for long time), so may not immediately appear in the S.M.A.R.T. attributes.
Please see for example: https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_case_bad_sectors.php
This is why (in addition to checking the S.M.A.R.T. status / health) it is always recommended to perform tests, exactly to reveal (and if required) stabilize the problems.
Please see: https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests
Probably there were some issue with the drive (even not yet recorded in the S.M.A.R.T. attributes), and the Disk Repair test (as you see) could detect, reveal and fix these.
> I don't hear the sound anymore. That is unless I run another surface test then it makes it again but the system does not lock up anymore.
Not sure, but there is good chance that the operating environment is not 100% stable: cables, connections and USB adapter/dock (not sure if used) may be in the background as they can frequently cause troubles you encountered.
Personally probably I'd use Disk menu -> Surface test -> Reinitialise Disk Surface as it is more "intensive" than the Disk Repair function in terms of stabilizing the drive status.
> 2) Should I be super worried that the drive is going to fail soon?
Without knowing the status, hard to say anything for sure. In addition to the Health, would be nice to see other values: for example the estimated remaining lifetime may indicate if the drive is near (or over) the designed lifetime and would be better to replace.
Also as mentioned, the operating environment plays an important role. If there is a problem there, then if you'd replace the drive, you may encounter similar (or even worse) situation.