I've just bought a new 60GB Travelstar to replace the old 30GB Travelstar in my laptop. The 30GB had started to make the loud click noise a lot more often than it used to so I felt it was a bad idea trusting it. All of the SMART attributes are fine and running the internal self test passes. Running DFT on it also gives it the all clear.

However, my new 60GB drive makes a different noise! Everytime the drive is idle it starts to make a continual tick, tick, tick noise after a few minutes until something accesses the drive. And then it will be fine until the next time. Anybody know if this is normal or not? All the SMART and DFT checks on the drive also pass without any problems.

I think I should stay clear of Travelstar drives in the future

- Trevor

Greetings!

I have not noticed that sound when the drives are idle / spun down. Do you have any software running that might be accessing the disk?

Thanks. I didn't think it should be making such an odd sound.

Nothing at all special is running. Just the standard services in XP.

I guess I'm going to have to RMA it. The guy on the phone was really unhelpful. Kept telling me to run the DFT program from IBM again even though I'd already done it. Going to have to write a big note on the box about the noise as I'm sure they'll just power it up and say it works fine.

- Trevor