I've got a new laptop and for some reason, the hard drive keeps making this clicking noise. It usually doesnt do it until i've had the computer up for about 15 or 30 minutes, but after an hour or so it clicks almost every time the hard drive is accessed(i'm going by the hard drive led light). The full sound is like: Click, standard drive read/write noise, Click. in my past experience, this kind of noise has meant that the drive is about to die, but this one is brand new and smartmontools said it passed the health test. i'm dual booting and the noise doesnt happen at all in windows, in fact, the drive sounded normal under linux until just recently. i'm running slackware 10.2 with a 2.6.14.3 kernel. is it possible that it's a problem with the ide driver? i'm using the PIIX driver because I have an ich4-m ide controller and this driver is supposed to work for ich4 chipsets. it mostly works, i can use dma with it, but i think maybe there might be some bugs concerning ich4-m. is it possible this is damaging my hard drive?

I would think its a problem with the hardware itself, and not the drivers. If so, and its still under warranty, get it replaced. It sounds like its signing its last verse.

I have the same problem, but I don't think it's the hard drive itself. I've recently purchased a new Toshiba 6021GAS hard drive and replaced it on my Sony Vaio PCG-Z1WA laptop. I'm running Kubuntu 5.10(kde version of Ubuntu) and I've yet to come across any support for this issue. The hard drive clicks mostly during idle. I was told to edit hdparm.config, but I've haven't got a clue what to edit in that file. It would be great if anyone can shed some light on this topic.

If a hard drive is consistently making clicking noises, I'd consider that to be a highly abnormal condition, and would recommend two things:

1. Backup any important data
2. Replace the drive

If it's under warranty, this should be cost-free. As you say, prior experience has led me to the conclusion that a noisy drive is a drive that is on its last legs. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I wouldn't risk it. Good luck with things