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

[Mick]

On Saturday 03 Oct 2015 10:55:42 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 03/10/2015 11:36, 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.
>
> Hard to tell. Obviously you have mechanical wear as the click stops when
> the drive is tilted. That indicates slight wear in moving parts.
>
> But for now the drive is doing it's job without errors. So all we can
> say is that you probably have a raised likelihood of a real failure
> sooner rather than later.
>
> How you approach this depends on your needs and budget. If you have good
> backups and can go without the data for a few days, there's no real harm
> is waiting till it really packs up. If drives are cheap where you are
> you might as well replace it now. I don't see any compelling reason in
> your case why you should do one or the other at this point.

Thanks Alan, I'll take a quick back up of some data I'd like to keep, just in 
case.
-- 
Regards,
Mick