anybody experience a wierd hd clicking sound while using suse linux?.It sounds like the drive is rebooting and the system stops for a couple of seconds before it resumes. I'm positive that its not a hardware issue becuase i tryed it with different PC's. I have had this problem for 6 months and i'm pretty sure that this fried 2 of my hd's.

any suggestions would be appereciated

Are you -sure- this isn't hardware related? In all instances that I've seen of "clicking harddrives," the hardware is on it's way out. Happened a few times with an old Windows machine I had; the computer would freeze while the hdd was messing up but got back to normal when the drive began working again. Have you tried your harddrive in another system? Taken it out and shook it?

If your computer is frying hard disks, it's almost certainly not a software issue.

A hard disk “ticks” when a read operation fails — the drive has to try to read the same sector twice or more to get the data out, and so it has to move the head back (the ticking noise) in order to re-read. This means that the hard disk is simply wearing out. This happens more often if the disk is overheating (you may want to invest in a hard disk cooling fan if this is the case).

If what you're hearing is more like a rebooting sound, then it could be that the disk is actually power-cycling. Possibly the voltage to the disk is low or unstable, in which case you need a higher wattage power supply inside the computer.

Alternatively, you could be powering down the disk too frequently (and dropping the power right before a read or write operation), due to power management settings, which can be configured either through your BIOS or through YaST.

Hope that helps,

— Robert J. Lee

let's see. I am sure it's a software issue. I tryed installing Windows XP/mandrake 9.1 on the drive ,works flawllessly. Tryed the hd with other systems works fine. tryed every possible hardware/Software combination and it works. problem is only there when suse is installed. i even got one of my friends to install suse and he got the same problem.

as far as heat problems are concerned, I checked it , case temp is around 28 degs, not enough to cause heating problems. if it does , why doesnt it show up when XP is installed??!!

power wise, I have a 420Watt powersupply more than enough to run a system with 1 hd. checked voltages too, nothing is beyong .2 v off, which is normal.

hmmmm your last remark though might be very helpful. I think its a power managment problem. its probably setting something my HD is not compatible or comfortable with. The power management in the bios is set to keep the hd on. The powersave package is not even installed.....


"lternatively, you could be powering down the disk too frequently (and dropping the power right before a read or write operation"

that sounds right. but whats the script/program doing thing and how do i turn it off ??


thanks a lot for the reply,

ok I think I got to the bottom of this thing. no more clicking and crashing

solution " hdparm -S 0 /dev/hdx"


the -S parammeter job is "This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power"
http://www.rt.com/man/hdparm.8.html

the standard suse value is -S 6 or so depending on the power save mode. the laptop drives tend not to mind this much becuase they are designed to be turned on and off more often. But my maxtor drives did not like this at all.

thanks a lot rjlee.