Hard Drive Grind

Benimaru · 7 Oct 2008 at 17:47

Hi guys, I know this is a stupid question but could anyone give me an example of what a hard drive grinding sounds like? (you know the needle grinding on the platter) basicly just installed a new hard drive with caddie and powered it up and noticed what I think is a grinding noise from one of my hard drives. I'm already backing it up as I write this post, I just need some sort of example to see whether I'm right or wrong.

Thanks

rpstewart · 7 Oct 2008 at 20:06

The head isn't hitting the platter, if it was the drive would have been dead by the time you'd typed your original post.

The mounting of an HDD has a huge bearing on the amount of noise it makes, is it the drive in the caddy that's making the noise?

pjansell · 7 Oct 2008 at 20:09

What are you running OS wise, could it be your disk thrashing as it's reindexing etc? Have you surface scanned it for errors? My be a stiff bearing, depending on drive type.

AtaRo · 7 Oct 2008 at 22:57

you will probably hear clicking noise if the drive has some mechanical problem and not a grinding noise.

Benimaru · 8 Oct 2008 at 03:37

Well the hard drive is an old 250Gb ide hitachi, not checked if its mounted on properly but i think the last time I put it in i tightened it pretty tight, also another thing I noticed, the grinding like sound is a lot less when you your pc has been running for a few hours.

-Ad- · 8 Oct 2008 at 09:00

Dust mites have got inside and have started testing anti-matter, watch out they evolve quickly.

My HDD is dieing, but clunks away, and programs from that drive load slowly or crash. Any other symptoms of a failure yet, or just a clicking ?

rpstewart · 8 Oct 2008 at 09:16

Benimaru said:
Well the hard drive is an old 250Gb ide hitachi

Hitachi drives are far from quiet at the best of times.

pjansell · 8 Oct 2008 at 22:53

Did you perform a surface/sector scan on it, did it report any errors?

Benimaru · 10 Oct 2008 at 14:15

Well the hard drive is not clicking, just making what I assumed was some sort of grinding noise, I've back up everything now so at least the data is safe. The hard drive works fine still, just that I know the hard drive is pretty old and think it may be on its way out. Good thing I just recently bought a new 750Gb Hdd

Benihana · 4 Dec 2008 at 14:46

Maybe try using the IBM fitness test which works on all drives or something like HDTach which can see if your getting smart errors. Either way you'll see if if the drive is in a bad shape.

Lanz · 4 Dec 2008 at 15:33

I have an old Hitachi 400GB drive, it makes an aweful racket when doing big transfers like movies and stuff.