Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[fzabkar]

It sounds like your HD is having difficulty reading a particular sector, or bunch of sectors. The hesitation is probably due to retries.

It may be an idea to run smartmontools (Linux/Windows):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/files/

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Download

smartmontools can retrieve the drive's SMART error log. This log may identify the bad LBAs (sectors). You can then identify the file that occupies that sector. See the following thread for more info.

Tip: How to determine which file occupies a particular sector:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=15364

To force the bad sector to be reallocated by the drive, you could delete the affected file and restore it from a backup. The next time the OS attempts to write to the bad sector, the drive will retest it and most probably replace it with a spare.

[Edhaszard]

Just want to chime in and say I have the same hard drive (in an HP Mini 5101), and have been experiencing the same clicking since the machine was new.

I show zero bad sectors on the drive using DriveCheck , everything says 'OK' using this tool.

I've found two threads on another forum which suggest that Dell released a firmware upgrade that fixed the problem for the ST9320421ASG:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5222070

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4823391&postcount=35

Is there a firmware upgrade for the ST9320423ASG? 

[bankya]

Hi folks, I have an ST9320423AS from HP with firmware 0006HPM1. The hard drive makes occasionally clicking noises, which drive me crazy. Health is estimated at 100% by HD Sentinel and there are no other issues with it whatsoever. I would love to update to 5SDM1 and get rid of the annoying sounds, but I am afraid I may brick it. Has anyone had experience with such a procedure?

Cheers