Clunking from hard drive

Vigoro · 18 Jan 2009 at 22:35

The main hard drive inside of my computer is currently making a clunking noise every 4-5 minutes or so. It has done this before about 6 months ago but has only started doing it again. Would it be a good idea to replace the hard drive in case it is on its way out and i lose everything?

The hard drive is a 80gb Maxtor SATA hard drive which is around 3 years old.

Vig

trickards · 18 Jan 2009 at 22:42

I had this on a laptop hard drive once, kept making my OS hang too.

For the price of replacing it, I wouldn't take the risk (500GB £35?). I doubt it's anything that is going to resolve itself.

Good luck.

ChrisLX200 · 18 Jan 2009 at 22:51

Strange noises developing in HDs is always Bad. May not mean it's going to die immediately though. Any of mine making wierd noises get swapped out.

Speed · 18 Jan 2009 at 23:30

Run the manufacturers HDD testing tool, which if it's a Maxtor drive would be Seatools, as they were taken over by Seagate a while back. Just get the latest version from the seagate website and run it in DOS.

See if it comes back with any errors, if it does just replace the drive. I would however suggest a quick backup before hand.

ChrisLX200 · 18 Jan 2009 at 23:40

It's a good thing to do, the HDD testing tool, but it only tells you about things that Have failed and is now giving errors. Strange noises usually indicate a problem that is About to Happen and thus the tool usually doesn't find anything wrong.

Speed · 18 Jan 2009 at 23:45

Well it's worth a go, it will also test SMART data, which includes things like error counts, if they go over the drives safety threshold it will fail the drive in the test.

But I do agree with what you are saying, there is just no harm in doing a full test with a full surface scan. Especially as it's a small drive, won't take too long.

Just backup before attempting anything, although to be honest, you should have already done so once you heard these noises.