Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive click of death?

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Saturday 03 Oct 2015 12:23:47 Dale wrote:
>> Mick wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> Recently I noticed that an old drive is clicking 3 or 4 times when it is
>>> powered up.  Thereafter is stays quiet.  I think it is a mechanical
>>> fault, because I placed the box on its side and the drive did not click
>>> when booting up.
>>>
>>> I ran smartctl short/long/conveyance tests and no errors are reported.
>>>
>>> In your experience is this something to concern myself with?  There is
>>> not business critical data on the drive at present.
>> I have found that if SMART reports a error, it is good to replace it as
>> soon as you can.  When a drive makes a noise that isn't normal, that's
>> also a sign that you need to replace it.  If you google around for that
>> model of drive, you may can find where others have had the same and they
>> shed some light on what happened, it died, it ran for ages and is normal
>> or something else.
>>
>> Right now, backups would be a good idea.  Doing some drive shopping
>> would to unless google turns up something that says it is nothing to
>> worry about, doubtful tho.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
> I don't know if I am getting more nostalgic in my old days, but it is things
> like this that make me like spinning drives.  More often than not they give
> some kind of warning.  :-)
>
> That said I've not yet had an SSD going sideways on me.
>


I plan to get me a SSD one of these days.  I'm going to let them work
out the kinks first tho, at someone else's expense that can afford the
things. 

At least bearings do give a warning.  The SMART tool can give early
warnings too.  I have had SMART save my data twice now. 

Dale

:-)  :-)