Horrible sounds out of my HDD. What to do?

[AlphaDogg]

Hello MR community!
I upgraded my HDD in my 2010 13" MBP to a 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 in around August. I installed hdapm, etc... It has been great. Except that I just had my MBP in for repair. I switched the HDD in my White MacBook, forgetting about hdapm. I went 2 days without hdapm because the MacBook did not set hdapm power values to max. This means that it was constantly doing tons and tons of loadcycles on the HDD. I just realized this when my MBP started making horrible noises coming from the HDD area. I just set hdapm values to max and it is fine. But, it is still making those sounds. I have a time machine backup. Should I clone the HDD tonight, deleting the time machine backups? I have uploaded an audio recording that I recorded with my iPhone for you to analyze. The link is here. The sound that I am concerned about is the clicking that is noticeable at the beginning of the recording.

Thanks,
Alpha

Edit: I just noticed that it happens whenever I boot up or open an application.

 

[wordoflife]

My old laptop did that. It's still working fine though.
Have you tried checking the S.M.A.R.T status on your drive?

 

[AlphaDogg]

My old laptop did that. It's still working fine though.
Have you tried checking the S.M.A.R.T status on your drive?

Thank you. I have checked the SMART status, and it is verified. I need to know what to do about my backups. My data is very important. If I lose it, I will fail most of my classes (I take notes on my MBP).

Basically, my question is: Can I trust time machine?

 

[AlphaDogg]

Is it ok to request an RMA from Hitachi even though the drive works fine? I am just deathly afraid of losing my important data and being without my ~350GBs of data. I have a 320GB HDD that isn't being used, but as it is only 320GB, I cannot put all of my stuff on it...

 

[Bigmacduck]

Basically, my question is: Can I trust time machine?

You should never ever trust a backup method blindly. In commercial IT you always use more than one backup media and you always test the restore.

I recommend to use at least two different backup methods. I use Apple TimeCapsule, Duper Super on 2 separate external Western Digital Firewire Harddisk (rotating) and a WD USB Disk with WD SmartWare Backup program (comes preinstalled on WD Passport HDDs).

I store the SuperDuper HDD with a family member who lives on the other side of town.

That backup strategy protects me well. Four different media, with 3 different interfaces (WLAN, Firewire, USB), in two separate geographical locations. If your house burns down or a sprinkler goes off or a water pipe breaks, it does not help much for data protection if the MBP and all the backup media are in the same room. Regardless how expensive the MBP was, it is never ever as valuable as my data on it.

 

[wordoflife]

Thank you. I have checked the SMART status, and it is verified. I need to know what to do about my backups. My data is very important. If I lose it, I will fail most of my classes (I take notes on my MBP).

Basically, my question is: Can I trust time machine?

You should always keep a backup of your data. With these signs, you have even more reason to do so. I like doing the backups myself, personally. That's up to you though.

I would go through with an RMA with Hitachi and tell them its very slow and making clicking noises.