Tech: Noisy harddrives

Subject: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: Shiplap Structure3
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 03:09 PM

My hard drive has suddenly developed a buzzing noise.The computer still works but v noisily,currently I'm trying to back up all my docs etc on cd as back up, in case of the machine failing. Has anyone had similar probs what was the outcome. The machine is 8 years old but has been specced up a bit and usually does what I want it to Its just completely the wrong time of year for major computer expenditure

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: GUEST,data jockey
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 03:29 PM

Besides the irritation, the noise is a warning. Hard drive failures are one of the most common failures. You are always wise to keep a current backup of anything that is important. Since you are not interested in replacing your whole machine, consider adding a new hard drive to replace the old one. The capacity / price ratio is very favorable. If your goal is no cost, look around for a cast off machine with a hard drive you can salvage.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: EBarnacle
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 03:44 PM

Are you sure it is the hard drive? Clean the air filter and fan. Dust build up can emulate the sound of a sick hard drive. If you are starting to get freezes and other similar problems, it is definitely the drive.
How old is your unit? Most street units are too small and slow to do you much good.
Meanwhile back your data files up while you can.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 03:49 PM

Any unusual noise is probably a warning. At 8 years old, with reasonable use, your HD probably is well past the "mean time to failure." Some last longer, but many die long before that age. Check though to make sure the noise actually is coming from the Hard Drive. Cooling fans are often a noise source than can appear to be coming from elsewhere; and on many computers the fans run intermittently, or change speed intermittently.

If you know the manufacturer of your present HD, you probably can find a diagnostic program on the maker's website (look under "support," usually) that may give you some good information about what condition your drive is in. If the people who made yours don't offer one, the second choice would be to use one from another major HD builder. These programs can't predict the future, but something that "makes a noise" is likely to be detectable as measurable deterioration in performance.

Assuming you're using a Windows operating system, you can also use the built in Scandisk, Checkdisk, etc. maintenance tools to at see if they indicate that there's been data corruption already, or a new crop of bad clusters. Look in "Help" to see what you've got.

At 8 years old, I'd guess that you have a fairly small - by current standards - hard drive, and a replacement hard drive may not be much more expensive than the CDs it will take to do a reasonably complete backup. The problem here is that you may have difficulty finding one as small as what you may have now. Local vendors in my area don't stock anything smaller than about 80 GB now.

If you're able to consider getting a new HD, as a "spare" the other one fails perhaps, there's the problem of getting all your stuff transferred before the old one gives out. The difficulties depend a lot on which OS you're using and whether you have an open set of connectors in the machine.

My experience has been that any persistent unusual noise from a Hard Drive nearly always means the drive will fail before you've done everything you need to to accomodate the failure.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 03:55 PM

A buzzing noise is probably a dirty/failing fan on the power supply. Hard drives fixing to fail start making clinks & clunks, intermittently but especially on disk accesses.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 04:09 PM

If you're opening up the case to clean it etc, tighten up all the fixing screws you can find. A buzz or rattle often implies something loose. It will at least help to narrow down the problem.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 04:43 PM

You can alwasy use an external hard disk enclosure to connect a spare hard drive through a USB port.

As said before the fan is a more likely sorce of noise.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: Shiplap Structure3
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 05:00 PM

I've had the back off and gently but thoroughly hoovered all the dust out(looked worse than under the bed!!). The hard drive isnt the original. I got the original 8GB swapped to 40GB plus some more ram by a local tech who was supposed to transfer everything over but wasnt too thorough, that was about 2 years ago
I powered the machine up with the back off and the buzz is coming from the hard drive.
Prior to the buzz I 've had freezes clunks and reaaly slow start ups I think the hard drive was No1 suspect and that I was clutching at straws hoping for an easy fix

Thanks to everyone who responded to the thread

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 05:10 PM

I've had a couple of noisy hard drives, one of which (this one was noisy for about the first hr of running) I suspect (the PC died for another reason) is still usable. My feeling is therefore that you could find you still have some time left in yours but you can't bank on it - they are not meant to be noisy...

As mentioned by others, other causes of noise are worth investigating and the first time I thought I had a noisy disk, it did in fact proove to be a fan that needed cleaning.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: EBarnacle
Date: 01 Dec 05 - 11:03 AM

Don't wait for it to fail. Since you know it is failing, save your data and replace now.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Dec 05 - 08:53 PM

As GUEST suggests, a USB external Hard Drive enclosure is pretty cheap, and is the easiest way I've found to get data from a hard drive to a new hard drive if you don't have the connections to have both drives in the machine at the same time.

Put the new HD in the enclosure, and (use the program that came with the new hard drive to) copy everything from the old one, making the new drive a "bootable" drive. Take the old drive out of the machine, put the new drive in. The PC will never know you've swapped them. If you wish put the old drive in the external enclosure and have some spare space until it does fail completely.

At my local retailers, the enclosure runs about $40 US, which of course doesn't include the new HD that goes in it, but it's well worth it in terms of ease of backing up and moving everything to the innards of the machine. (There are cheaper sources than my locals.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JennyO
Date: 01 Dec 05 - 08:54 PM

In my case, when I was getting a lot of noise, it was the fan, a tiny little thing with louvres(?) that had clogged up so badly with dust that hardly any air was getting through. The clue was that the noise took a while to build up after I turned the computer on. It's now been replaced with a bigger and better designed fan. I also had screen freezing, which was not fixed by replacing the fan. Seems it was a faulty video card, because since that has been replaced, there have been no more problems.

We do seem to get a lot of dust around here - and that includes talcum powder which I use (and couldn't do without) - even though my room is in another part of the house, the stuff is so fine it goes everywhere. More regular vacuuming and keeping some doors shut are one thing I can do. However, I have a little negative ion generator and I was wondering if having it near the computer might help. Anyone got a clue about that?

Jenny

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 05:58 AM

"Take the old drive out of the machine, put the new drive in. The PC will never know you've swapped them."

Are you really sure XP will be happy with that, what with their clever licencing arrangement John?

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 06:19 AM

Robin -

I just used that procedure to put a 160 GB HD in place of the old 30 GB HD in her Win2K machine, and literally the PC never knew anything happened.

I've made numerous hardware changes on my two WinXP Pro machines, and while Mickey does occasionally ask to "authenticate" when I go in for updates, it doesn't really seem to correlate with when I've made changes. It's just sort of a "once in a while check" sort of thing, and it's pretty painless. I wouldn't expect any problem.

I used a slightly different procedure to replace a hard drive in son's WinXP (#$@% Home version), transferring every thing via my LAN to one of my machines, installing the OS and original programs on the new drive, and copying back data files via LAN. While straightforward, and conceptualy simple, it was a R!P!I!A! process. He's since connected and gets autoupdates, and they've never questioned the changes.

The only problem I'd see is if you put one of the drives in another machine and they find the same OS certificate in use on two obviously different machines at the same time.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: Ella who is Sooze
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 06:28 AM

Buy an apple mac...
they're soooooooo lovely and quiet..... and they look bloomin lovely too.

E> W> I> S>

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 06:49 AM

they're soooooooo lovely and quiet until the apple mac's hard drive gets scabby, and then they make the same noises as the PC with the bad drive. ( ;>] )

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JennyO
Date: 02 Dec 05 - 07:04 AM

Anyhoo, my PC is whisper quiet now, so there :-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: Shiplap Structure3
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 04:26 AM

Thanks for all the advice
Got backed up on an external drive 250 gb for £80 seemed a great deal I had thought about replacing the fan but I couldnt get the old bugger out I didmanage to shovel a 1/2 tonne of dust out of the insides and gave it a thorough going over with the vac no valves or tranistors came loose ( no probs with static either) I carefully checked all cable connections just in case there was a problem with the spark plug (but couldnt find it/them I think my machine must be diesel)Put it all back together no left over bits always a good omen for success and guess what the operating system couldnt be found. Finally found it lurking in the drive cage, after I became despondent routing the cables as per the manual abit of trial and error a few profanities and now I'm in computer heaven . One slightly dark cloud I have a suspicion that this machine might not last another 10 years

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: EBarnacle
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:26 AM

Of course it will. It will be like grampa's ax--All the components will be upgraded or replaced but it's still grampa's ax. That's what modular construction is all about. There are catters who are still using DOS machines.

Subject: RE: Tech: Noisy harddrives
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 12:51 PM

Nearly all the machines I've abandoned over the years have died at ten to fifteen years of "motherboard embrittlement." Something cracks, and it's not worth the effort to find what. You may be about due for a new clock battery if you haven't replaced, but I've only had one machine that lasted long enough to wear out the first one.

I still keep a couple of the old ones sitting around the corners of the office just for sentimental reasons, but I've just about scavanged all the useful guts by now.

A caution: Do make sure that fan is actually running. Usually they're not too difficult to extract and replace, and are pretty cheap; but a melted processor will definitely limit the remaining life of your machine.

And: If you're still booting from that old noisy drive you might want to check out how to make a recovery disk. If you did a "mirror" backup, you may be able to start Windows from an external drive, but if it's on the usual USB connection you'll have to provide a "USB enabled" pre-boot to get to it.

John