Hard Drive runs well but klunks

[jonny b]

I have a Dell Lappy with a Fujitsu MHR2020At hd in it. It does it normal humming sound that I can't describe but then I can hear the arm clunking about 3 to 20 seconds. Clunk--hum---hum---hum---hum---clunk---hum---hum---clunk---hum---clunk.
On various error checking times it showed up with O bad sectors.
Is this drive looking for something it can't find so it clunks? This is a fresh install of Windows.

Or is it magnetically confused so the arm goes back and forth and clunks?

Is this drive going bad even though the PC runs well?

 

[freetomove]

did you run the dell diagnostic disc at boot? it will usually tell you what the event viewer doesnt see....... try it...

 

[Midknyte]

http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

download ubcd, then run powermax 4.09

 

[Justintime]

If its not constant it could be some sort of thermal calibration or something similar to seagates STIR (Seek to increase Reliability), unless its recently developed this noise then it may just be normal operation. Although.. the noise you're describing sounds similar to many hdds death/soon to be dead noise.

 

[kaulbach]

Some HD need to find a reference point when being initialized, so they move the read/write head all the way over until it hits the stop. It klunks against this a few times and then decides it is the furthest over the head will go and then starts calibrating itself from there. Floppy drives work on a similar principle.
EDIT:
If you have the drive set to power down/off in power settings, and it is one of these types, it is better to set it not to do this or it will do this klunking every time it comes out of spin-down and calibrates.

This can also happen if the bios geometry of the HD is radically different from it's physical layout. Spends a lot of time skipping back and forth across cylinder boundaries etc.

 

[DanceMan]

http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

download ubcd, then run powermax 4.09

That's a highly useful cd. But you probably want to run the Fujitsu diagnostic on it. Maxtor's will usually error you out if you try it on someone else's drive.

 

[ThreeOnTheTree]

Really wierd clunks don't usually happen. If the drive is a few years old, then it might be going bad. Laptops take a lot more abuse than people realize, and the HD is usually the first thing to suffer.

 

[kaulbach]

I scutinized the datasheet for this drive, found at http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fcpa/hdd/discontinued/mhr-4200-rpm_datasheet.pdf

Notice they only give the Acoustic Noise level for Idle Mode (which means it may normally be loud when running). This is 24 decibels at 30cm (about a foot). Also found a lot of pages with hits on "noisy fujitsu".