I have two 9 GB SCSI hard drives in my very low volume web server. (We need to put some larger ones in soon but they're good enough for now.) Since the day we setup this server, back in 2003, the hard have noticably clicked. The clicking has been randomish every few seconds other than when installing software, copying files or similar activity where you'd expect a lot of hard drive acivity. I always thought this was because of all the random activity of being hit every few seconds from the Internet. And the logging of web pages hit, etc.
However for 16 hours it was down because of misconfiguration by the ISP and the hard drives still clicked. Is this normal behaviour?
One is a Seagate ST39102LW and the other a Quantum Atlas IV 9 WLS. I installed the Seagate tools and both failed the short drive test. But I wonder if those hard drives are so old the tool doesn't deal with them properly?
The IDE hard drive we installed as a backup/archive hard drive happily passed the Seagate short DST
The Atlas series was a noisy drive. There are two possible reasons for clicking with them. They have a notoriously noisy park mechanism which is probably what you've been hearing for all this time. The second thing that the Atlas series did was click when the drive hit either extreme point of extension.
The Seagates to my knowledge didn't have the same issue with parking or noise, but, weren't 'quiet' compared to today's drives.
The oldest drives we have in production is a system we're about to virtualize for a client. A Raid-5 set with 18 9gb drives that cost them $8800 in 2000 or so running a dual P3/1ghz. Machine pushes about 120kb/sec with some peaks, but, has been running fine since it was put online in Dec 2000. We do have two dual-drive Raid-1 36gb systems that were put in place in Dec 1998 that are still operational using ST336704LC. I don't recall if the drives in those two machines were replaced, but, smartctl reports that and a serial number that seagate's system doesn't recognize. Again, this machine is scheduled for virtualization next month. Still does the job it was purchased for, client has no complaints.
Hard drives click when they're about to die.
Take a backup now, and get ready to replace them both in short order.
The Seagate ST39102LW was originally manufactured in 1998. Seriously dude.. Replace them. They're way beyond their intended life, and now at the very far end of the bathtub curve.
Also.. 9GB? Really?
I agree with the owner. I once had a Micronics drive that chattered with every increment of head movement performed by the motor. Sounded like chattering teeth. Was like an armor tank, worked great, never died. Used for a BBS, and ran continuous file maintenance every night.
Clicking on a rhythmic basis, in a repeated fashion, may indicate a problem however. But I don't think that's the case here. More than likely, the head is reaching the extremes of its arc, on an intermittent basis.