Samsung T166 hard drive clicking

locky123

I have a Samsung T166 HD501LJ 500GB hard drive which is just used for storage, not used very often, but it has just started to click loudly, only for a few seconds, when it is powered on. Is there a way to test if it is a drive or circuit fault. I ran windows chdsk and found no problems.

paddyrg

It is dying - get a replacement and get everything off it. It may last another 2 years, or 2 days, just you can be confident it is on its way out

lucylucky

Yup - get everything backed up ASAP, it is on its way out.

macman

I had an ancient Samsung SCSI drive that 'clicked' for about 6 years before finally expiring-but I wouldn't count on having it that long, so back up now!

locky123

Feared it was the death click. Essential files backed up now.

What would you recommend as a replacement? Western Digital? Any brands more reliable than others? Are larger disk sizes less reliable?

JasX

locky123 wrote: »

Feared it was the death click. Essential files backed up now.

What would you recommend as a replacement? Western Digital? Any brands more reliable than others? Are larger disk sizes less reliable?

I'd strongly recommend the samsung 1TB model HD103SJ, no more expensive than other 'normal' drives but in tests benchmarks blisteringly fast, even at near older SSD speeds under the right conditions.

Given HDD access is often one of the slowest parts of a modern machine you should notice the improvement.

-there is also another trick to make it even faster when you set it up to put a small primary / outer partition (200GB) so it uses the fastest outer portion of the drive for programs.... tho on a single drive setup will be quite dependant on how you use it -how often you install / uninstall stuff as a small partition will not help it remain uncluttered/unfragmented for long if you do that alot. plus if you use the larger partition for bulk storage of photo's music media etc it won;t be too efficient if you access that frequently -the same head will have to make more internal movements if thats on the same physical drive and not a separate one.

PS the small / 20% outer partition trick works for all drives (but only if the 20% partition is big enough to be useful)