hard drive noises -- western digital wd800ve

[Michael Roberts]

hi,

thanks for all your responses.  i've heard similar things, and am getting a 
replacement drive sent out from WD.  however, a few interesting things:

1) the frequency of the tic/toc noises (really they sound like "toc - tic" 
..) decreases when i disable acpi.  i should have done this before, of 
course....  I haven't tried switching to apm.  but w/o acpi, performance is 
pretty good, and i don't get the delays with tab-completion.

2) i've run every hardware tester i could get my hands on, and none of them 
find any bad sectors/block/anything.  the drive always checks out.

this is all making me think that i've just got my system configured wrong.  
like maybe i need some special device in my kernel for this particular 
drive?  or maybe i need to mess with acpi settings to get things 
streamlined?

any suggestions along these lines? or should i just trash the thing...

thx again.

>From: Dan Ponte <dcp1990 at neptune.atopia.net>
>To: freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: hard drive noises -- western digital wd800ve
>Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 13:07:23 -0400
>
>On Sun, Jul 31, 2005 at 10:33:32AM -0400, Michael Roberts 
><tpen0010 at hotmail.com> was witnessed plotting the following conspiracy:
> > hi,
> >
> > i'm encountering something funny in a hard drive i just installed.  
>issue
> > is: the hard drive makes clicking noises sometimes when the system is
> > trying to access the drive, and when that happens, there is a momentary
> > (half or quarter second) pause in whatever the computer was trying to 
>do.
> > e.g., if i type in a partial path in a terminal, then try to 
>tab-complete
> > it, i hear a little tic-toc, accompanied by a pause, before the 
>completed
> > path shows up in the terminal.
> >
> > the tic-toc noise is a little melodic (kinda like vibes) if that 
>matters...
> > which it probably doesn't...
> >
> > my info:
> >
> > drive: western digital wd800ve.  i think this is an eide drive.
> > running 7.0-current on a dell inspiron 8600 laptop.  previously running
> > 5.4-stable, and upgraded to see if it would fix the problem, which it
> > didn't.
> >
> > this tic/toc noise only occurs occasionally when i run windows on the 
>other
> > partition of the drive.  it causes the same delay there, but like i said 
>it
> > only occurs once in a blue moon on the windows side, and is therefore
> > tolerable.  on the freebsd side, it happens all the time.
> >
> > anyone know what i should do?  any and all help would be appreciated.
> >
> > thanks!
>
>I'd like to chime in here as well. I have a drive that does the exact
>same thing, although it is a few years old (a WD200 20GB).
>Smartmontools, however, reports nothing out of the ordinary. And the
>clicks don't happen as often. They usually only do happen, however,
>under heavy disk IO (such as during the daily runs). I really should get
>the drive out of there and purchase another, but I'm a tad strapped for
>cash as it is. I've seen this happen with quite a few other WD drives,
>as well, though haven't observed in detail to the extent that I do now.
>-Dan
>--
>Dan Ponte
>http://www.theamigan.net/
>Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
>you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
>for play?
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