Peter Jason wrote:
> My HDD has just started to make pronounced clicking noises. Is this
> significant?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death
There is a difference between clicking and buzzing. Buzzing means the
heads are flying all over the place to read and write data which means
there is a lot of data going to or coming off your hard disk. If it's
buzzing then you can using something like SysInternals' Process Monitor
to see what is causing the massive reads/writes.
If the hard disk is clicking once (not repeatedly) and then spinning
down, you could have a power scheme that powers down the hard disk at
very short intervals. The hard disk isn't actually powered down. Power
remains up to energize the controller board on the hard disk. Just the
platters are spun down to conserve energy. A click followed by a
turbine slowing noise means the platters are spinning down to stop.
If you have multiple hard disks, the idle time for each is measured
separately so they may spin down at different times. Click and spin
down. Then when you or a process access the idle drive, click and it
spins up again. In Windows XP, the shortest turn-off (idle) time for a
hard disk is 3 minutes. You didn't mention how often or at what rate
you hear the clicking noise.
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