hard drive makes clicking sound when not in use

[thecurrybot5000]

for about a month now, my hd has been making a weird "clicking" sound whenever the computer is idle. however if start acessing the hard drive (eg i open a program or start downloading something) the clicking stops until the next time the hard disk idles.  any ideas what this is? Thanks.

[kf_man]

There is not really definitive answer based on what you told us, but you need to BACKUP NOW!  This is no laughing matter since the drive will likely die very soon.  I would recommend that you at least make a backup now and possibly just replace the drive.  You can buy pretty much any 2.5" ATA Hard drive and it will fit right into the laptop.  I would not mess around with this since data loss is a huge problem with hard drives.

Now that I've said that, hard drives will make a certain amount of noise.  The big thing to ask is whether this is a new noise.  Most times, new noises indicate problems.  If this is so, I would definately replace the drive.  If you are still under warranty, I would get right on the phone with HP!  Good Luck.

[makeagoodday]

for about a month now, my hd has been making a weird "clicking" sound whenever the computer is idle. however if start acessing the hard drive (eg i open a program or start downloading something) the clicking stops until the next time the hard disk idles.  any ideas what this is? Thanks.

I have a similar problem before. It turned out that it's due to Microsoft's NET framework background compiling procedure (I can not remember the name of that EXE file now). That is, when your PC is idle, some background tasks of Microsoft wil lstart. To check which software is accessing your hardisk, you can try to search a utility called NT file monitor @ http://www.sysinternals.com

[kf_man]

I haden't heard of this before, but that's a very likely thing.  Even so, I would still make sure to backup your important data before you try anything.  Hopefully, this is the problem and all will be well again.  Good Luck.

[makeagoodday]

for about a month now, my hd has been making a weird "clicking" sound whenever the computer is idle. however if start acessing the hard drive (eg i open a program or start downloading something) the clicking stops until the next time the hard disk idles.  any ideas what this is? Thanks.

I recalled the name of that EXE file

You can try to see if there is an EXE file called "mscorsvw.exe" running when you PC is idle. If so, don't need to worry. If not, good luck and follow kf_man's suggestion ...

Here is the URL explaining about "mscorsvw.exe"

http://blogs.msdn.com/davidnotario/archive/2005/04/27/412838.aspx

[thecurrybot5000]

awesome, thank you so much you guys. this thing was driving me crazy.