Hard drive noise

mips1 · 2011-07-29 18:30:09

Sample files of the noise.
http://wikisend.com/download/373754/1.ogg
http://wikisend.com/download/562886/2.ogg

My laptop can be completely idle with no applications open and then all of a sudden the HDD will start making a noise but the HDD activity led does not come one. The noise goes on for about 30 seconds and then dissapears, about a minute later the same noise will appear again but this time for a shorter duration and by the time the screen blanks the noise no longer appears. The noise does not appear if I'm booted into a plain text console/terminal, only when loading X/Ob.

atop & collectl report no disk activity. The drive is also not load cycling as laptop-mode-tools are installed and the counter for load cycling does not increase.

So can anyone tell me what the cause of this noise is?

Last edited by mips1 (2011-07-29 18:30:39)

MoonSwan · 2011-07-29 19:43:08

Run smartmon tools to see if the disk is healthy; use gsmartcontrol if you prefer a GUI.

graysky · 2011-07-29 19:56:51

Odd, for the most part it sounds very regular... that is it occurs at a regular interval. Not good in my book. My recommendation is that you backup the data ASAP and replace the hardware. Smartmon tools will show you the SMART data, but there is a poor correlation between that and disk failures. I'd post the reference, but I don't have it handy. Use google if you want more.

EDIT: I always use iotop to interogate HDD usage by the way.

$ iotop -Pao

Last edited by graysky (2011-07-29 19:57:57)

R00KIE · 2011-07-29 20:30:55

To me it looks like the disk is doing offline data collection but I would need to see the the output of smartctl -a /dev/sd? to be sure (smartctl -c /dev/sd? would also do but having the full smart report might be handy for anyone trying to help).

lagagnon · 2011-07-29 20:38:32

Definitely backup ASAP, but you might also want to try the Ultimate Boot CD (from CD or USB boot) as it has a lot of hard drive tools. You will need to know the manufacturer of the hard drive (lshw ?)...

mips1 · 2011-07-29 22:21:21

R00KIE wrote:

To me it looks like the disk is doing offline data collection but I would need to see the the output of smartctl -a /dev/sd? to be sure (smartctl -c /dev/sd? would also do but having the full smart report might be handy for anyone trying to help).

I think you are correct
Just looked at the smart report and it seems to be running short self-tests every minute and extended self-tests every 31 minutes which seems to correspond to the intervals I'm hearing the noise.

smartctl -a /dev/sda output:

smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-2.6.39-ARCH] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Momentus
Device Model:     ST94011A
Serial Number:    3KW5M7QP
Firmware Version: 5.11
User Capacity:    40,007,761,920 bytes [40.0 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   6
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2
Local Time is:    Sat Jul 30 00:08:36 2011 SAST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)    Offline data collection activity
                    was completed without error.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)    The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever 
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:         (  426) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)    Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)    Error logging supported.
                    No General Purpose Logging support.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:      (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (  31) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   065   059   034    Pre-fail  Always       -       192912987
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   099   099   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   099   099   020    Old_age   Always       -       1027
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   081   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       132665849
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   087   087   000    Old_age   Always       -       11861
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   034    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   020    Old_age   Always       -       1109
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       480
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       919766
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   037   052   000    Old_age   Always       -       37
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   065   059   000    Old_age   Always       -       192912987
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs  0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]


SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

http://pastebin.com/LvHujz0v

I'm not to concerned about the pre-fail flags as this drive does not skip a beat although it's over 6yrs old but does not get used much. Some of my desktop drives have worse values
Also it does not contain any critical data. I'll only start worrying when I see the Reallocated_Sector_Ct & Current_Pending_Sector values start changing but for now this drive is good.
The noise is not a failure noise and has been around for many years but seems to differ in frequency depending on OS/distro being used if I recall correctly & previous years the laptop use to sit far away from me working as a download box so I also did not hear the noise but now that it's closer to me it's annoying me.

Is there any way for me to adjust or disable these self-test polling intervals.

Last edited by mips1 (2011-07-29 22:38:15)

R00KIE · 2011-07-29 22:36:46

The thing you are interested in is "Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.", that's what I wanted to check. The behavior you experience is the expected, the smartctl man page says the drive will do an offline data collection automatically every 4 hours when it is enabled.

You can disable that with 'smartctl -o off /dev/sd?' but I would leave it alone. As for the different timings depending on OS/distro, it all depends on how often the drive is idle long enough to automatically activate/resume the offline data collection (automatically suspended when there is any disk activity and automatically resumed after some time of disk inactivity).

Edit:
The thing you mention about 1 minute and 31 minutes is not what you think. Those are the estimated times for short and complete smart self tests respectively. Those tests are initiated by the user, not automatically. The result of those tests will show up in the "SMART Self-test" section, yours is empty so no short or complete self test was ever performed.

Last edited by R00KIE (2011-07-29 22:42:50)

mips1 · 2011-07-29 22:58:18

Ok but if this is suppose to happen every 4hrs why is it that I hear this noise at like 1 minute intervals even though the laptop will stand idle for hours with no disk activity to interrupt the process?

R00KIE · 2011-07-30 10:33:37

As long as the computer is on there is always some disk activity, either some system log getting written or programs saving their own logs or status files.

A full offline data collection will take at least as long as an extended offline smart scan to complete, in practice it will take longer because of interruptions, also the smart tests (short,extended, offline) seem to make periodic noises, at least the drives I own do it, you may want to hear the experience of other people.

On top of that, if everything is working fine and the smart parameters don't indicate that the drive is about to fail I wouldn't worry about it, of course do keep regular backups of important data ... and a backup of the backup for very important data.

mips1 · 2011-07-30 16:09:48

Ok, I'll leave it as is. Thanks for your assistance.

Suppose it's just me getting annoyed with the noise as the laptop is completely vented in the front so the noise travels quite a bit, if it was any other laptop I would probably barely hear it.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-29 18:30:09

Hard drive noise

#2 2011-07-29 19:43:08

Re: Hard drive noise

#3 2011-07-29 19:56:51

Re: Hard drive noise

#4 2011-07-29 20:30:55

Re: Hard drive noise

#5 2011-07-29 20:38:32

Re: Hard drive noise

#6 2011-07-29 22:21:21

Re: Hard drive noise

#7 2011-07-29 22:36:46

Re: Hard drive noise

#8 2011-07-29 22:58:18

Re: Hard drive noise

#9 2011-07-30 10:33:37

Re: Hard drive noise

#10 2011-07-30 16:09:48

Re: Hard drive noise

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