Associate
Hope I can get some advice on this one, appreciate any ideas.
I've got a WD 250GB drive (IDE, 7200rpm) that I use in an external caddy.
I got it second hand but still sealed in its anti-static bag. To begin with it was fine, its not the quietest of drives by any means but it wasn't bad, just the usual noises. And then about week or so ago I noticed it getting quiet a bit louder. Not in terms of data access but rather the spinning. Before it had quite a quiet but high pitched whine to it which is what I would expect, but its now gone to a lot louder and harsher sound, and this is just from it spinning so it sounds like this all the time. Occasionally it goes a bit quieter again for a while and then it goes back to this louder jarring sound. Thats the best I can describe it!
The long and short of it is that it doesn't seem natural, the only thing that comes to mind is that it sounds almost like bearings were wearing out and the noise was coming from that. Do the bearings wear out in a harddrive?
Do you think I'm likely to see a drive failure in the near future with this? Also, if it is likely to fail, the warrenty runs out in a few months so I need to do something about it soon. Do I have a good enough case to try and claim on the warrenty, or are they not gonna accept "its got noisy!" as a good enough reason :s Would any of the low level diagnostics that come with their disk utility program show anything up that would support a claim or will they just do surface tests and not show any mechanical problems?
Any advice much appreciated! Thanks!
[Edit]
This is the drive..
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=42
Cool, quiet and reliable...anything but that at the moment!
I've got a WD 250GB drive (IDE, 7200rpm) that I use in an external caddy.
I got it second hand but still sealed in its anti-static bag. To begin with it was fine, its not the quietest of drives by any means but it wasn't bad, just the usual noises. And then about week or so ago I noticed it getting quiet a bit louder. Not in terms of data access but rather the spinning. Before it had quite a quiet but high pitched whine to it which is what I would expect, but its now gone to a lot louder and harsher sound, and this is just from it spinning so it sounds like this all the time. Occasionally it goes a bit quieter again for a while and then it goes back to this louder jarring sound. Thats the best I can describe it!
The long and short of it is that it doesn't seem natural, the only thing that comes to mind is that it sounds almost like bearings were wearing out and the noise was coming from that. Do the bearings wear out in a harddrive?
Do you think I'm likely to see a drive failure in the near future with this? Also, if it is likely to fail, the warrenty runs out in a few months so I need to do something about it soon. Do I have a good enough case to try and claim on the warrenty, or are they not gonna accept "its got noisy!" as a good enough reason :s Would any of the low level diagnostics that come with their disk utility program show anything up that would support a claim or will they just do surface tests and not show any mechanical problems?
Any advice much appreciated! Thanks!
[Edit]
This is the drive..
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=42
Cool, quiet and reliable...anything but that at the moment!
Last edited: