Hard Drive Making Sounds?!?!

[Pollux]

lately when i've been starting games or loading a cached web page my hard drive has been making a skimming sort of noise. like when you make the "s" sound... is this normal? what's going on here?

[rl]

no big deal thats just the "im going to blow up so run" sound /forum/smile.gif from your discription it seems ok, its not broke till it dont work /forum/smile.gif

[Ed_S]

Anytime a hd's noises change, it's best to do a backup just in case and start preparing for failure. Might be nothing, could keep going indefinately, but could fail tomorrow. Check the markings on the drive for the date code, if it's less than 3 years old, it's under warranty from most manufacturers. Once had a Western Digital start to go when it had 2 weeks remaining. Called them with only a few days to go & they made good, sent out new drive (with new date code... /forum/smile.gif )

[Pollux]

thanks

[AndreBranco]

i dont know for sure about this but on my computer my new harddrive was making a different sound and had a benchmark of + - 7604 (sisoft sandra 99), now after removing it from next to my onboard speaker and placing it above my cdrom, my harddrive is making the same beautiful normal noise it made when i bought it, and i have a score of 10257. i dont know really but i think the onboard speaker in everyones computers might be making hds sick.

[welsh wizard]

I noticed on some El Cheapo cases recently that the On board speaker is mounted to lower hard drive bay, back in the old days we were always told speaker magnets and recordable material don't mix, who's the H**l is dezigning these cases these days.

[Pollux]

I'm going to move my hard-drive this weekend... geez, you would think that they'd be smart enough not to do that?!?!

[nilknarf]

They assume that other manufacturers are sheilding there stuff, wether it be a HD or speaker. We all know how to spell assume right?!

BTW, most internal speakers today do not have a powerful enough magnet to do any damage. To see the effect of your speaker's magnet, hold it next to a CRT monitor or TV. But not for any length of time, unless you want to degauss the screen!

[KillerBug]

Not next to the TV, and not next to the monitor, unless you have a degaus button, or one with a magnet and a line crossing through it. Also, after moving the speeker, try doing a scandisk on your drive, odds are it will pick something up on basic level, but I can almost guarantee it will pick something up on the Thorough level.

[Moe]

That's kinda funny Ed, cuz the same exact thing happened to me with a Western Digital HD.

I think it was a caviar, I shipped it to them and they replaced it.

It actually was making (loud) noises prior to failure, so I would certainly make a backup, but your situation Pollux doesn't sound extremely serious.

Anyway I basically agree with the above advise, just wanted to throw in my little story about the noisy drive.

[Pollux]

Thanks a bundle to everybody who's helped me.... i moved my hard drive to the lower most 3.5 slot so we'll see if that makes any difference whatsoever.

thanks
-pollux