Two of my HDDs are clicking and have an excessive load-unload cycles.
I'm running 2x Samsung F3 1TB (HD103SJ) in RAID-0 using Z97 chipset Sata 3 ports.
My MB is a ASRock Z97 Extreme6, HDDs firmware is 1AJ10001. MB Bios is P1.33.
I had 13.1.0.1058 RST driver and installed 12.9.2.1000 but the issue persisted.
I have Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit running on a Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD, I also have two more HDDs, one Seagate 3TB and one Toshiba 160GB... No issues with these drives.
On my previous setup I was using these HDDs on a X58 chipset Sata 2 ports, also in RAID-0 mode, Intel RST 11 and got no issues.
I think the drives are going idle too fast, because when I need to open or seek for something on the drive, the click starts.
I don't know if this is a BIOS problem or a Intel RST problem, I don't know for sure, but when the computer starts, during post I can hear the click (only once, if I go to UEFI there is no click there and the drive is detected by BIOS).
I tried some troubleshoots, configured (advanced power management, automatic acoustic management, sata aggressive link power management, windows power management) but nothing worked : (
I'm kinda desperate because I have one "click" each 10 seconds (approximately), it means 3600 load-unload cycles in 10 hours!
For now I made the disks off-line through Windows disk management, until I figure out some solution/workaround.
I appreciate any help you can give!
UPDATE!
The problem was solved by installing Intel RST 12 series drivers, power off, disconnect the PSU cable, connect the affected hard drives on another Z97 Sata port and power on the computer.
If I install Intel RST 13 series driver the issue will return, is this a bug with RST 13 series? I don't think my HDD spending one load/unload cycle each 10 seconds is normal.