Bought my TR3A about 2.5 years ago now. From day one the HDD made the, now infamous, ‘click… click… click’ when idle. From what I could work out everyone with a Hitachi/IBM drive was in the same boat.

A few weeks ago the drive finally died with a loud scraping sound + BSOD. On restart it would not boot windows. After scanning the drive I found about 5% of sectors had been destroyed and S.M.A.R.T. warned me the drive was about to fail ‘imminently’.

So ... I bought a brand new Hitachi HDD from Newegg. Same capacity but completely different model. Installed - It all works great.

EXCEPT, IT STILL MAKES THE CLICKING NOISE WHEN IDLE!!!

Unbeleiveable!! This indicates to me that this clicking is either: part of the design of the Hitachi 1.8"ers; or some part of the TR3A that causes HDD to make weird noises. Please note this is not software related as the HDD still makes the noise right after a perfectly clean install of Windows.

And not only does it make the clicking noises - but its also made a few scary sounding drive parking noises. Bloody hell…

I find it hard to beleive this is a problem with the Hitachi drives as that would mean it has existed for almost 3 years across different models of HDD and they have not fixed it. Which only leaves the VAIO to blame (some how).

:(

I was given a Dell craptop to do some work on for a fortnight and the hard disk made the same click sound when idle. It sounded like the drive was about to die.

I really don’t think it’s your vaio, it sounds like the drive.

hi,
i got a S1HP, it also got a hitachi HDD and it also makes these weird clicking sounds when its idle…
so its not just the TR ...

Well remind me never to buy an IBM, sorry er I mean Hitachi HDD ever again!

In general I avoid them like the plague - I went through the whole DeathStar sage so lost two HDDs that way. Now my VAIO HDD dies, and its replacement doesn’t sound much better!

Another annoying thing i’ve noticed is that when it makes the head parking sound the mouse cursor also freezes for a split second. Gah! how is an OS written in such a way that that can happen these days?

[quote author=“jtu100”]
Another annoying thing i’ve noticed is that when it makes the head parking sound the mouse cursor also freezes for a split second. Gah! how is an OS written in such a way that that can happen these days?

uh, thats bad !
fortunatly, i dont have any performance issues, the sound is just annoying !

if HDD ever dies, i am not planning on getting a hitachi again…

I have the same issue with my new Hitachi external drive as well. I think I mentioned it in my review a while back. Good news is that its been over or around a year and no issues.

Erik