HDD spins up, clicks and spins down at idle

[chriswing]

Greetings!

I have an old (2012) Sata 1TB HDD (Western Digital WDC WD10EALX-009BA0) that spins up at idle, clicks and then it spins down. The clicks last for 1-2secs and when this happens, desktop is refreshed and I think the drive is essentially unusable during that process. Other than that it behaves ok.

I don't know if there's any issue with it because I've tested it with several tools and everything seems to be ok.
- Tested it Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, HDTune and CrystalDiskInfo -> ok.
- Tested the drive with the error checking tool from windows -> no errors.
- Optimized with the windows tool -> 0% fragmented.
- Tested with CHKDSK -> everything is fine.
The temperature at idle is around 29C. I use this HDD only for storage because windows and apps are on my SSD. Right now I have 840 GB free of 931 GB on my HDD, so it's almost empty. I think the most stressful operation for this HDD was when it was almost full and I transfered everything on an external drive.

In other words should I be worried about it or it's just something normal?

 

[Ahhzz]

Yup, worried. Run trial version of HD Sentinel on it, and tell me what you get.

 

[chriswing]

Yup, worried. Run trial version of HD Sentinel on it, and tell me what you get.

 

[Regeneration]

Are you running Windows 10? If so, read this thread. Probably the clicking you hear, is the head parking off and on.

 

[chriswing]

Are you running Windows 10? If so, read this thread. Probably the clicking you hear, is the head parking off and on.

Yes, I have windows10. I set the disk idle timeout to Never in advanced power options. I hope that will fix it if it's something wrong with the head parking.

 

[Regeneration]

If you're reffering to the "turn off har disk after X" in the control panel, that can be it, but APM is another power saving feature that needs to be disabled with a 3rd party utility like CrystalDiskInfo, HDD Sentinel or HDPARM. The APM option gets reset on every cold boot, so a script or shortcut on "Startup" is required.