What are these small and big "click" sounds in my hd??

[GreggBz]

Never another IBM drive for myself.
I've owned a few IBM "Deathstars" and they make that wonderfull click of death usually within 9 months.

And.. to add insult to injury, my GF's laptop has an IBM (Hitachi) Travelstar, which after 1 year light service now makes it's own unique click of death. All the SMART utilities i have say it's ok.. but that can't fool a wise one like me.. especially when I hear the Deathstar click and windows XP grinds to a screeching halt. Also, my IBM Travelstar off of e-bay failed in my Amiga 1200 after about 3 weeks of VERY light use..

[GreggBz]

Yes, the firmware in modern hardrives prevents you from low level formating it in most cases. However, you can download utilities usually from the HD manufacturer that allow you to do this type of thing. I'm not really sure they actually reset all the bits to zero though.

I have currently a >1 year old Travelstar hardrive that won't work unless I poll it with a S.M.A.R.T utilitiy every 60 seconds or so. Well.. It works but VERY slowly. If I use the smart monitor in windows it runs almost normal... If you discount the occasional scraping noises and the once in a while Deathstar click of Death'ish noise that I'm ohh so familar with. I should make an MP3 of that SCRAPING noise.. it's really horrorific! Like a screwdrive through an alluminum can or something.