I have the same issue. Not sure if mine’s a Samsung, but it is a Dell 1330. Random loud click. What did you find out?

Thanks.

Tom,

I got a new Samsung hard drive from them, same model, same computer, same loud click. However, the good news is that the new hard drive clicks very rarely. You can use Everest Home Edition, a free program, to check out the brand and model of your drive.

I can report the same noise from a Samsung 250GB drive bought separately to replace my old Seagate that died.

Out of the blue; “CLICK!”, then silence for a long time.

As with the poster above, I see no connection between usage and clicking.

UPDATE: I first changed the HD mode to performance in the BIOS (click still happened, but less often).

THEN, I updated to SP1 in Vista and knock on wood, it hasn’t happened all day since I upgraded. Could be that the click was something to do with Vista’s management of the HD, but who knows…

I’m sure as soon as I submit this it’ll “clunk” to spite me.

Oh my…. All you guys dont know what the click of death is.. You soon will know.. This click you recognize is one of the first signs of a physical harddrive defect.. Be sure to backup as often as you can, and if its dead check if you have warranty or better change it now..

Markus,

That is usually the case, but I don’t believe it to be defective as both of the hard drives I’ve received have this clicking sound. Other people with the same hard drive also have it, it could be the way the hardware was designed. I’m not sure. I’ll certainly do backups though, it’s generally good practice to do that anyway.

I have this exact problem with my brand new XPS m1530. It doesn’t happen often, just every now and then.

I called Dell Tech Support, and they make me do a lot of noise/harddisk test, There is no problem or noise during those tests, but as soon as I start Vista it comes back again.

I suspect it is something to do with Vista and/or hardware driver, but a quick search in google suggests a mac user has this same problem, with the same model of harddrive. So I think it is definitely hardware defect. When (or should I say if) Dell Tech support get back to me, I will ask for another model of harddisk. Keep me posted on how you guys are doing.

Same clicking, same hard drive @ inspiron 1720 :/

My new Samsung HM320JI 320GB 2.5 ” notebook drive also produces the loud clicking sound. The sound is similar to when when the power is shut off suddenly and the heads are retracted. I am using Win XP Sp2 on a Sony vaio. Looks like it’s only happening when the drive is idle. Happens sometimes every 15 min or so.

However, sometimes I also get an audio sound probably generated by the drive like an alarm tone of about 3/4 of a second.

I have a SMART monitor running constantly, but nothing is recorded in the smart attributes of the drive, except temperature change (highest about 40 degrees).

It looks like the click is positively recorded in the S.M.A.R.T attributes. I had 2 clicks within a minute and was recoding the raw smart data while the second click was happening.
The attribute changed was:
load/unload retry, it changed from 427 to 428, all others (raw values)did not change

This is also confirmed by a posting about another samsung drive (250 GB) where ‘morecowbell’ says
“Cons: CLICK EXPLANATION - SMART property number 0xDF ((LOAD/UNLOAD RETRY COUNT) is the number of loading retries when reading, recording, positioning of heads) increases with each and every abnormal ‘click’. Loading is the heads moving from their plastic parking tab that lifts them from the disk (unload) to the disk (load). Rapidly unloading causes the click by the actuator arm hitting the “”door stop”" for the arm. I’m guessing that when the drive is idle, it unloads and when it loads again to write/read there’s an issue and causes the arm to immediately retract and try again. But it also happens when active so it must also reload if there’s any other anomaly. After 116 hours of POT, there have been 368 clicks, 4736 sectors recovered via ECC, and 41 re-reads required. The compromise between storage size and reliability should NOT be such that emergency reloading the heads is required, period…ever. I wish the seek time was better - I don’t care about noise.”

see: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822152094&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&SelectedRating=-1&PurchaseMark=&VideoOnlyMark=False&Page=1

Sorry to say you’re all screwed. I’m on my second Samsung HM320JI drive now and the first broke down after 3 months. The new drive has the same clicks as the old one had. And there is still an occasional beep from the motherboard. I will call Samsung and ask them to replace all their new drives. Evidently there is something wrong with all of them.

I’ve tried my old fujitsu drive (which is considerably slower) and it has no ECC recoveries or the like. It doesn’t click and no beeps from the motherboard. As it should be.

No luck I’m afraid. Couldn’t speak to anyone that knew Samsung made harddrives. Anyone know a number or e-mail address I could use?

And I’ve noticed something else. The G-Sense Error Rate current and worst values are decreasing toward the treshold value. You noticed the same?

The sound you are here may simply be the part of the power saving features built into the computers bios or the OS. If you have it set up to cut power to the drive when its not in use for a certain period of time. The hard drive makes a loud clicking noise when the power is cut. Its the read/write arms hitting a small bar inside the drive. i have a 120GB 5400 RPM 3.5″ drive in a G4 Cube that does this all the time.

Chris, the “clicking” sound I am describing cannot be mistaken for the clicking sound when the power is cut. The sound I am describing is more lika a “clunk” and you can easily hear it one or sometimes even two rooms away (that’s how loud it is). Occasionally the clicking noise is followed by a beeping or screeching sound which is even louder.

Hello,

I noticed the same noise as you for my new HM320JI. The drive is in an Insprion E1505/6400.
The clunk appens randomly I would say.
Another thing is that with Speedfan freeware, I see its tempreature reach sometimes 56°C with big activty (file copy) ! The average is 49/50°C, with very few activity (internet, word processing). Have you the same values for temperature ?

JK,

My temperature is averaging around 39C. I don’t know why there’s such a big discrepancy between the two temperatures. Yes, I would say that the clunk is completely random. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and hears the clang, maybe it wakes me up…who knows.

I recently installed the Samsung HM320JI as an upgrade in my MacBook Pro 15″, and have noticed the same loud click. It’s random, and seems to be just the read/write head parking.

My heart skips a beat every time I hear that click.

My HM250JI has been clunking randomly for over a year now, without a hitch in performance. The occurance is truly random. It doesnt seem to be detrimental, but it does seem to be a logic glitch. The drive normally performs a Load/Unload at times, different than the Idle parking. It load/unloads ramdomly, akin to an ink jet printer wiping it’s nozzles in the middle of a print job.Studying it’s behaviour carefully, I notice that sometimes it will do the Load/Unload wipe normally, which is a barely audible ‘clicka’, even quieter than some competitor drives during a normal idle head park. But sometimes, there is an irregularity that causes the Load/Unload cycle to spike the voice coil, or cut power to it causing it to mechanically park at which time it is inevitably pulled back to the platter for service, instantaneously. I believe that Load/Unload cycle logic is defective, perhaps being normal when no data is demanded, but abnormal when the Load/Unload command and a data command are recieved at the same time. Something like that I’m thinking. Doesnt seem to damage the drive, other that theoretical wear on the latch mechanism.

Same disc, same random / frightening click. any of you got already a damaged disc?
(HM320JI in MacBook with 10.5.4)

I bought a harddrive like this and I had the same problem. In the first time I heard this “click” I thought it was a hard drive problem. So I came back to the supplier and change by another, but the model is exactly the same. And the problem, also, remains the same.

Actually I noticed this noise is only when the laptop is idle. There is no relation with BIOS power save, Windows Vista or anything else. The first click I heard was when I just powered on my laptop after install the harddrive. So, no relation with Vista. I tried to find out something in BIOS configuration, but I found no options to change this state. My laptop is HP Pavilion tx1000.

At this time I started running a Hard Disk Self Test in BIOS and the test didn’t finished well, it returned a status “#1- 08 Fail” (I understand the test failed but I have no idea what does this code mean).

Even with this result test code, it doesn’t seem a problem but I’m not sure and I’m really thinking about change it for another model/vendor.

Same problem here. I’ve got a Macbook and installed this samsung hdd this weekend. Clean install and his has been clicking since the beginning.

Not sure if I’m going for a swap yet. It seems to work fine.

Do your backups folks! Rsync that clicking beast at least once a day. Other than that, 320 GB on a laptop, for under 100$, you can’t beat that!

Yes, LKB. I have already had a damaged Samsung HM320JI (died after 3 months). I cannot prove that it failed due to the clicking though. I got it changed to a new Samsung HM320JI, it has lasted 5 months so far. Clicking noise is there, 39 average temperature but worrying G-Sense Error rate which is getting close to zero. No performance drop, altough the clicking sometimes coincides with a micro system hang, of approximately 1 second. I would recommend another drive, like WD. I will not buy Samsung drives again.

Hi Guys

I have 2 Samsung HM320JI and also have , western digital 320GB 2.5 (SATAII) model they both do the click sound.

Also I send my WD to service, they said no problems.
They said ,They didnt hear a thing while they are testing for 30 Minutes.

Probably HDD Idle issue.

The only problem I got the other day is Partition tables are gone.
The click sound nothing to do with it.

In my oppinion All new 320GB 2.5 HDDs are have the same click sound. And thats not an issue

Not sure if this adds much to the discussion but I have a new Samsung HM320JI in a Toshiba. I used it to replace a smaller 80GB drive which never had any clicking whatsoever. I also notice the clicking every so often. What is interesting in regard to Bios software discussions etc is that the drive also made the clicking in a USB enclosure whilst I was imaging my drive.

I would have thought that the OS / Bios control over USB drives would be different to how it controls internal drives in terms of power management and performance settings. My point being that it would thus be unlikely that you could fix it by changing Bios / OS settings.

My loose observation is that it is when entering / exiting idle states.

i’m also having the clicking (btw, “klack” in german sound with my HM320JI - using a external enclosure with usb and e-sata connection. anyone heard anything from samsung about the issue?

Same hard drive HM320JI 320gb, same problem! This clicking sound is really annoying.. My disk is brand new, I bought it just yesterday but I heard this noise more than ten times in few hours of use..
I think it’s random and it’s not related with any OS.. I’m using Ubuntu right now and have the click anyway..
Maybe it’s an error directly from the factory and almost all of HM320JI have this problem!

Turns out WD had a similar problem with their drives, but WD’s support team were kind enough to supply a fix for it. Anyways, I reduced my clicking to once every hour or so by increasing Advanced Power Management to Performance i.e. a value of 255. I’m not sure how you change that setting in Ubuntu, maybe try hdparm.

Same ‘knock’ sound issue with Samsung HM320JI 320Gig drive in a Dell Inspiron e1405. I installed it several days ago, and have heard the knock sound on numerous occasions, with no patterns as to usage. Samsung has an ES-Tool, anyone know if this is something that will help with this issue?
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?group=&type=62&subtype=67&model_cd=324&dType=G&mType=SW&tab=down&ppmi=1159

Sounds like a hardware class problem, and the posts above are mixed regarding drive life expectancy. If I come up with a solution (other than purchasing a new drive) I’ll let you know.

just found this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235455&page=4

It appears that using the Samsung CD boot utility (ESTool) and disabling AAM should help - and if you have a Dell, setting the system BIOS HDD performance to “bypass” setting.

I haven’t tried this yet - but it’s on my list. Will let you know if successful.

Tronpilot, I have disabled AAM and put performance to max. Only difference is that it “knocks” less often. If you check S.M.A.R.T values you will see G-Sense Error rate decreasing and load/unload retry count will increase. I’ve written to Samsung twice about this (about 2 months ago) but they haven’t answered, which shows how much they care about their customers.

My toshiba laptop doesn’t recognize my hm320ji samsung hard drive.

Jocelyn,

What do you mean? Are you trying to install a fresh copy of XP onto your laptop? If this is the case, be sure you have a slipstreamed copy of XP that supports SATA hard drive. Otherwise, you’d have to change your hard drive settings in the bios to ATA133 (correct me if I’m wrong). The second option will result in a slower hard drive though.

The same problem happened to me. The HDD died after 2 months.
I sent a letter to Samsung… but there is no answer

i just got a new sony fw18od that uses this harddrive and have been getting the same clicking noise since the first day of purchase. I contacted Sony support and they told me to do a harddrive check and have it do auto correction to disk. This sort of helped, it orginally made the sound every few hours or somtimes every 15 minutes, now it clicks only once or twice a day. I been today that if i send this back to sony they are only gonna run a few test and none of them sound test then return it to me and tell me that it is fine. Also if all the Samsung HM320JI are like this which hard drive other model harddrive would you suggest

Same problem, same disk on a macbookpro 15.
I just received a new hm320ji samsung, installed it.
It’s true, it is amazingly quiet… unless those clics…
I think to send it back and change for another one.
I already changed a toshiba 320 for this samsung, it was VERY noisy… and the clics on the samsung is too anoying…
Which 2.5 320GB -really silent- would you recommend ???
JC.

Followup to my previous post above.

Well, I ran the Samsung estool, and AAM was already disabled. I ran a check, no issues found.
The drive still knocks periodically - no rhyme or reason to it. So, for now, I’m stuck with a knocking drive - and ensuring I perform regular backups.
If I find a solution, I’ll let you know. Good luck everyone.

I was constantly getting a clicking/popping sound. Seemed to occur more often when running IE or Firefox. I have a Dell Latitude D620 with a brand new hard drive installed 3 weeks ago. Since I changed the HDD performance to “bypass” setting in the system BIOS the noises have stopped completely. Good thing to because I was just about ready to grab a sledgehammer and smash this laptop to pieces ba ha ha ha

scratch that the sound is back…..damn it.

Hello everyone

I’ve got the same problem with my Samsung drive as everyone else. But there is something more, because I cannot run Samsung ES-Tool v. 2.11a. I get some exception while detecting my drive.

Here some screens:
http://ab1.pl/_ex/

And right now I even cannot perform this actions suggested above. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

My e-mail: scislo@6lo-kielce.edu.pl

Tomek

I just got my XPS M1330 yesterday and thought I was lucky. I got the LED screen and got a perfect one with no grain and a beautiful image. Too bad there is a very audible “tatunk” sound from the hard drive, sometimes several times per minute. It is a 500GB Samsung. Research tells me a LOT of people have this issue with all brands (WD Seagate and Samsung) and not just the Dells. Vaios, HPs and others too.

Good news. I fixed it! In my Bios was a setting for hard drive mode and three options were give. 1)no setting 2)quiet 3)performance

Apparently it sets the hard drive for quiet or fast operation. Mine was set to 1)No Setting (default). I switched it to Peformance and since have not heard one click in several hours. This after hearing several clicks a minute ALL THE TIME. Hopefully this helps someone else too because a lot of poeple have ended up returning their PCs after swapping drives numerous times!

Hey guys!

I have this same freaking noise at my HM320JI. I had another HM320JI that had the same noise, and another HM250JI with the same sound. And I have replaced the HM250JI for this HM320JI because I thought it was a hardware problem.

After hours of research I´ve found that both HM250JI and HM320JI have the Load/Unload Head Technology.

Another stuff I´ve discovered is that Windows Vista (that I use) has the default setting of shutting down hard disk in a period of 20 minutes of disk inactivity.

And then after some other hours of research about Load/Unload I´ve found a video at youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWjeWKg4mVA) that I share with you.

And then I´ve concluded that the noise we have is generated by the Load/Unload Head Technology that occurs after a disk power off, that is commanded by ther O.S.

May be, I´m wrong. Anyway, now, I feel comfortable using my HM320JI with this souns.

I hope I have helped everyone.

Greetings from Brasil!!

Merry Christmas!!

Marcelo Hayama

I had this problem with my samsung 250GB. The click was extremely loud at times and would make me jump out of my skin in a quiet room.

Changing AAM settings made it less frequent but just when I thought I’d fixed it, it would click louder than ever.

And then it started beeping when it parked on shut down. Quietly but noticably, a bit like a PC speaker only an octave above.

Then I was using it one day and the thing beep incredibly loudly (a horrid shrill sound), and since then it kept doing it twice a week or so. It appeared though no damage was being done but I installed smart monitor software to make sure.

After a few more months the G sense error rate suddenly began to vall towards the threshold value. It fell extremely quickly and after just 4 months it was at 2 (normal value 100). Raw read error rate and uncorrected error count stayed at 100 but the raw values rose.

I needed an external hard drive so put this in my enclosure and replaced it with a 320GB western digital. A little noiser when seeking but quicker access and no unpleasant noises. A faint click can be heard when it parks but this is consistent with leaving PC to idle after a minute or so. Using software to disable drive power management stops it. With the samsung it didn’t.

And the samsung. Still working as a USB hard drive. It will still clunk alarmingly when connected and one of my partitions is corrupt (the windows recovery one) but the rest worked and when I reformatted all was fine, so it may just have been a USB issue recognising the two paritions.

Either way, the western digital runs well so if you can’t get samsungs diagnostics to recognise it as faulty (you need to in order to get it replaced), then using it as an occasional USB drive is an option.

My Samsung harddrive also clicked, now 3 months later its completely dead! So you should really backup your data if you hear the clicking…

I have just got my new Dell XPS M1530 and instantly had this weird clicking sound coming from the harddrive.
I changed the bios settings from “bypass” to “performance” and had it on all last night and no CLICKING!

I’d just like to add that if it is the odd “click” here and there don’t worry too much. It’s the crunching sounds you should worry about.

Fingers crossed it will stay this way.

My harddrive is a 500G Samsung if it helps anyone…

Stu

Got this drive yesterday>Same Problem.This is nuts.Drives should not be making these noises.Last drive i will ever buy from samsung.There should be a recall on these drives.An online patition should be started and sent to samsung

Hello all! My second Samsung HM320JI just decided to kick the bucket (that’s two Samsung hard drives in a year: not worth it). Now I am using a WD Black (7.200 rpm) which is a little louder (around 2 dB) but using less power on battery (yes I was amazed too, haven’t done proper tests but I get around 10 more minutes from the WD drive). But best of all: no more clicks or beeps, no more micro system hangs etc. The drive looks healthy. Speedwise not to much of a difference between the WD Black and the Samsung. Vista maybe starts marginally faster but there is no huge difference. I recommend it to everyone! Play it safe and buy a new hard drive.

i have the same issue here with my d620, and changing the bios hdd performance settings did’nt help. keep an eye on your system log, this may report corrupt blocks on your disk. if so, it’s time to buy a new drive … :/

I got my HM320JI in Feb 2008 for my MacBook Pro. The clicking noise was there, but I kind of disregarded it, as it did not affect performance in any way.
However the clicks have become much more frequent lately and I got a bit worried. So I checked the S.M.A.R.T. status data. What I found is an extremely high Load_Cycle_Count: currently it’s at 983313 after a year of use. Its normalised value is at 003, which is barely above the threshold of 000.
Some surfing on the internet suggested that laptop drives are usually only rated for up to 600000 Load Cycles; meaning that I’m way beyond the life expectancy of the drive. However, Samsung give 3 year manufacturer warranty on the drives — I’d expect them to survive as much. The drive also reports having 5 bad sectors and 1 sector pending reallocation.
Unfortunately, Samsung doesn’t seem to manage warranty replacements/repairs directly; rather in case of trouble you have to contact the dealer from which you bought the drive. I did that and I really hope to get a replacement.

Samsung Drives are a joke! I’ve got this HM320JI…I installed it in my MacBook in Nov 2008. Seemed fine when I first installed it, then about a month or so later, I noticed a random clicking noise. Didn’t think much of it until 4 days ago (4-4-09) when my MacBook stopped booting. I tried using the Mac OS X install DVD to verify/repair the drive but that failed.

When I connected the drive externally to rip the data off, no clicks whatsoever! I went to the Samsung website to get RAM instructions; that referred me to the place I purchased the drive from (DIT Computers) and they referred me BACK to Samsung! What a f*ckin joke! I’m NEVER purchasing anything from Samsung again! Western Digital All the Way!!!

My HM320JI has clicked al the time since I bought it(inside of a samsung laptop).
All the time there where no problems, but when I wanted to resume my laptop from sleeping it just hang up.
After booting windows in safemode I started the windows harddisk check. It repaired 3 files, 1 from my antivirus and 2 from windows.
After this windows didn’t boot again so I started the diskrepairing tool on a windows 7 RC 1 dvd. It got my windows to work again, but it seems I have a bad section on my drive now. My laptop freezes rather quickly.

I hope I can get it fix without reformarting the disk, and on top of that I hope I don’t have to change the disk.

Hi guys…

I have had this problem for a long time and only today found what seems to be a solution for it. I have only applied the solution minutes ago so I will have to monitor it for a while and see how it works but from the feedback on the link below it seems to have solved the problem for a lot of people…

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=168425

Post #1 details the solution and there are over 30 pages of replies to the solution. Take some time to read it and see if it might help you.

Regards,

Ro

Same clicking and crunching in second Samsung hm320ji in Dell xps m1530. As IT Tech I recommend to all customers to replace this hard drive. Can’t count the number of samsung hard drives that have cratered come across my bench. Hear a noise that makes you jump fix it and stop jumping. I’ve done ok using Seagate and W/D. Never never buy Samsung They should of stuck to cheap stereos and getto blasters.

looking for an external housing for a Samsung hm320ji — suggentions

i have the same problem but with samsung hm160hc ata drive… they´re all crap

PLEASE READ THIS! IT MIGHT SAVE ALL OF YOUR DATA!

I came to this forum about 6 months ago when I bought my new hard drive. Like the author, everything was OK except the loud clicking noise. I convinced myself everything was fine - it’s just the heads parking or whatever… but yesterday my harddrive crashed. The click became a grind, my computer froze… and it broke.

Thankfully I had backed everything up, so nothing too important was lost.

But be warned. I had these exact same symptoms and my drive broke 6 months later. BACK UP YOUR DATA AND BUY A NEW HARD DRIVE!

Similar to all the above… I’ve been hearing nasty clicking for some time with my hm320ji which I bought to replace my tiny old 100gb wd drive in my Asus G1. The clicking is usually trigged by a hdd write operation and is accompanied by some occasional grinding whir/spin-up sound and some slight OS lockups/freezes. It’s becoming more frequent..

I took a backup last week, fortunately, since today the PC refused to boot; my hdd wasn’t even recognised in bios! I tipped the notebook upside down, and tried it again, and by fluke managed to get it to boot! But I’m sure I’m nearing the death of this drive.. so time for one more backup, investigate warranty options (3 years yeah?), and get a new one ASAP!

I’ve been using two of the SAMSUNG HM320JI hard drives for over 18 months. One is my primary drive (MacBook) and the other is on my Firewire backup. It’s made the clicking noise right from the beginning. After checking it out, I decided to stick with it. I still hate the clicking, but I’ve never had any problem with the drives.

After reading the comments here, I’m getting a new drive. No sense in taking unnecessary risks.