Clicking Inspiron 4000
Diagnostics /PerfMonitor/

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Diagnostics /PerfMonitor/
Mini-Poll

On the screens below are screenshots from Windows 2000 performance monitor. For those who aren't familiar with this tool, these graphs are displaying what actually happens in your PC during a period of time, on pre-selected sets of counters.

Clicking sound is now visible, I'll give explanations to each screen. I decided to monitor following activities, all but the last one from the PhysicalDisk category:

1/ % Disk Read Time /Screen2/
2/ % Disk Write Time /Screen3/
3/ Avg Disk Bytes/Transfer /Screen4/
4/ Avg Disk Queue Length /Screen5/
5/ % Processor time /Screen6/


Below Screen1 - Overall shot, no highlight. I'll use the highlight to bring up each graph counter, since they are sometimes hard to read because simultaneous value movements covering each other. The graph spikes here representing 4 consequent HDD "clicks"...

Screen 1 - Overall

inspn_4000_front_grey.jpg

Below Screen 2 - %Disk Read Time /highlighted white/
The activity here shows only small read percentage...

Screen 2 - Read

inspn_4000_front_grey.jpg

Below Screen 3 - Disk Write Time /white highlight/
Here is is CLEARLY visible what happens during clicking in the disk....

Screen 3 - Write

inspn_4000_front_grey.jpg

Below Screen 4- Average Disk Bytes/Transfer /highlighted white/
As seen on the graph, the amount of data written doesn't exactly corresponds with the time spent during writes to the drive.

Screen 4 - Avg Byte Transfer

inspn_4000_front_grey.jpg

Below Screen 5 - Queue Length /highlight/
Here is about write+read alltogether, a good match to the click.

Screen 5 - Disk Queue

inspn_4000_front_grey.jpg

Below Screen 6 - Processor Time
CPU is inactive mostly, but during the 2 biggest spikes it's completely down, no activity.

Screen 6

inspn_4000_front_grey.jpg

Conclusion

In about 75%of time the sound is represented by the above captured HDD activity. But , there are those remaining 25% when drive clicks, and there is zero data movement.....

Anyone knows why is the drive clicking-clunking ?

Let me know if you do.

Thanks
Dave