The click sound is usually caused by the drive parking its head. There are multiple causes for that, including power management and shock detection (see below for fixes). However, it may also mean that your drive is about to die (the dreaded "click of death"); check /var/log/messages (or /var/log/syslog) for suspicious errors, and remember to backup!
The clicking sound appears to occur only when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking. Launching programs that access the hard drive, such as searching or defragmenting the drive, helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive, such as through a full power-off reboot of the system, stops the ticking for the moment. hdparm can be used to reset the drive without rebooting, or to set the power management settings.
Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level.
- Code: Select all
sudo nano /etc/hdparm.conf
And add the following :
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# Change sda to hda if it's a PATA drive
/dev/sda {
apm = 255
apm_battery = 255
}
Source
