I'm getting clicking whenever I run a 3D game/program

[K.I.L.E.R]

My system starts to click(I think it's my HD) and then I get pauses, sometimes more than a second long and then it goes fine, and then pauses again and so forth.
Pauses are random but frequent.

It isn't stutter, it's actual pausing. My HD is making noise.
What's the deal with that?

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Sounds like it is probably dirt in the drive.

Take it out of your system and drop it into a big bucket of hot soapy water.
Let it soak for one hour. Take it out and hit it with a hammer a few times to dislodge the dirt.

But seriously, try google.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hard+drive+clicking&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I fixed the issue.
It was a bad sector.

My Western Digital software "repaired it" and on all my other software shows the bad sector as a good sector now. What did it do to "repair" the bad sector/s?
This all started when I was playing Ogre Battle on PSX with an image.
I went for a save state and then it locked up, when I wanted to exit with escape I couldn't and so I restarted my PC only to come up with an error saying windows\system32\common was missing.

How does an entire directory go missing?

I've got my HD receipt, if I take it back I cannot prove that there was a bad sector and so it will not be exchanged AFAIK.

What do I do?
Is there still a possibility that my HD will fail?

 

[arjan de lumens]

My Western Digital software "repaired it" and on all my other software shows the bad sector as a good sector now. What did it do to "repair" the bad sector/s?

Probably just remapped the sector to a hidden spare sector (so that if you try to access the bad sector, the hard disk will silently access the spare sector instead). Modern harddisks usually have dozens or hundreds of such spare sectors; it's rare to have a harddisk that doesn't come with a number of remapped sectors out from factory testing.

What do I do?
Is there still a possibility that my HD will fail?

Bad sectors should never be visible and are usually a sign that the drive is either deteriorating from old age or has been exposed to an unhealthy shock. Under normal operation, even when a sector does go bad, the harddisk should notice it, correct the error using ECC, then automatically remap the sector without any user intervention needed.

If you have important data on your drive, I suggest you take backups immediately. The drive may continue to work for a long time still, but I would not trust it.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

If I explain the problem will they replace the HD?
Thanks for the info.

 

[Frank]

If I explain the problem will they replace the HD?
Thanks for the info.

It's not unusual by itself. It's only unusual that it took such a long time for the drive to swap it out to a spare sector. That occasionally happens. Probably a set of sectors that were still just above the threshold.

If you really want to know the health of your drive, look at the SMART status with the WD utility. It will most likely tell you that all is well.

Generally, unless it does really strange things, the SMART status shows errors, or it actually shows bad sectors (meaning all the spare capacity is used up), it's just how it's supposed to be.

 

[suryad]

Scandisk or any such tool showing any anomalies on your hdd?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Yes.
Still.
I formatted and ran the bloody thing again.

Guess what?
Couldn't read the cluster.

If I "fix" the cluster one of my Window's directories is going to dissappear like the last 2 times.
The only thing I could do is use Windows's backup/imaging backup thingy but even that only has a certain level of reliability.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Okay, can you guys tell me what this means?

Just re-run another test in DOS:
222 Drive Failed the Test The drive has failed the SMART test. Replace the drive. Replace Drive
Yep, that was my error.
Replacing drive on Monday.

 

[Frank]

That sounds bad. It seems to be broken after all.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I'm lucky my files haven't gone.
Why does it matter if SMART is dead?
My drive "works" so far but it probably might do osmething if I install something else big on it.
For some reason it can't find any bad clusters anymore.

I don't get all of this.

 

[Frank]

I'm lucky my files haven't gone.
Why does it matter if SMART is dead?
My drive "works" so far but it probably might do osmething if I install something else big on it.
For some reason it can't find any bad clusters anymore.

I don't get all of this.

SMART is for the most part a bunch of checks and statistics.

For example, every time something goes wrong, the software in the drive will log the problem and correct it. But the amount of errors that can be repaired is limited, and multiple errors in a short time is reason to suspect that something is wrong.

If you look at the smart status, it's mostly a bunch of numbers that show the percentage in which a whole lot of things inside the drive are working as intended. (Although the scales of the different measurements can be different, and not all of them count down.)

If those values pass some threshold (around 63% for most things), the drive will tell the OS that it is almost gone and needs to be replaced. And when it fails it's selftest, it should tell the OS that it is broken and needs to be replaces ASAP. Although it will most likely still boot your computer.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Well I ran a DOS media test and it once again "fixed" the problem. Although I'm not sure how long.
Thanks.

 

[suryad]

Good luck man I hope you dont lose anything.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I decided I'm not going to take it back yet.
It seems to be working perfectly.
I will back up everything important and when it explodes I will replace it with a new one.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Problem is starting again, I've diagnosed it a lot and now my conclusion has changed.

The problem with the hard drive was corrupted data, and SMART had failed.
SMART was fixed and all my different software(5 different bits of software) and it's now working perfectly.

However I'm still getting the problem above only after strenous use of my video card.
If I revert to software renderers it dissappears and doesn't come back until I use my video card heavily once more.

The sound is one click with a whine(Sorry I didn't say this when I started the thread, WD site cites this as being normal). Then the game/application skips a lot and pauses like in my original post.

My video card is dying, and these are signs of it occuring. It's almost 4 years old, been overclocked a fair bit.
My friend had his Radeon 9700 Pro (Never OC'ed it once) for 3 years and it's already unusable in anything 3D accelerated.
It displays severe corruption in anything 3D.

How long does it have until my video card dies or becomes unusable or a hinderance to use?

 

[Frank]

The pausing and skipping is because the program is waiting for data from the harddisk. It has noting by itself to do with the videocard. But, try connecting the drive to a different power connector.

 

[arjan de lumens]

Click+whine sounds very odd for a videocard. A defective GPU should produce image corruption or total system freezes; a defective fan on the videocard may whine, but they rarely click.

Check your case temperature with the videocard idle vs active; if there is a temperature difference, the culprit could still be the harddisk. Dying electronic components very often exhibit a kind of behavior where small temperature changes will tilt them back and forth between 'working perfectly OK' and 'working badly'. However, you sometimes get such behavior from perfectly healthy electronic when there are power supply/connector problems too.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

The problem is non-existent when I don't use 3D acceleration.
I checked the power and it works fine.
Temperature isn't an issue for my HD but not sure for my video card.

 

[Frank]

The problem is non-existent when I don't use 3D acceleration.
I checked the power and it works fine.
Temperature isn't an issue for my HD but not sure for my video card.

Then try changing your PSU, if you have another one. Or see if Motherboard Monitor supports your motherboard, and record the voltages.

When using 3D, your videocard uses more power than the rest of your system together, and it might be more than your PSU can handle. (You did have a pretty powerful one, didn't you?)