Ticking Noise Followed By Crash

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23 May 2006
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I have a problem that I believe is caused by a faulty (in some form) HDD, but I am not entirely sure.

I recently re-installed windows over the christmas period (middle of december), firstly to clear things up, but also to sort out a few problems (my CSS not loading, explorer crashing whenever I view a folder containing video files, and a few others). This problem has only occured since the re-install, and it may just be a coincidence the hard drive has decided to start failing on me.

The situation is this, I will have my PC on and be doing nothing I haven't before. All of a sudden a 'ticking/clicking' noise starts coming from my case, and around 10-15 seconds later my PC will freeze. The only way to sort this out is to restart it. The reason I believe it is an HDD problem is that I can't imagine wherelse a sound like this would come from. This problem only just came back the other day, after a good month and a half of no problems. When I try and start my PC again after holding the power button down to turn it off, I am presented with long beeps from the case every few seconds, and nothing ever happens. To overcome this I must turn it off again, and wait a while. The beeping may simply be because the PC didn't turn off correctly, but it may give a reason as to why it is doing it.

My computer specs are as follows:

FX-55, DFI NF4 Ultra-D, HIS X850 XT PE, WD Raptor 74GB, Maxtor 200GB, Thermaltake Shark (may be relevant to interpret the beeping).

I guess it could be the WD raptor that is the problem as windows is installed on this one, and I was not sure if windows would crash simply if the Maxtor one failed. Neither have clearly died yet if they are the problem as the PC still turns on, and I can access both.

Any help would be greatly appreaciated, as I may need to get a replacement hard drive sorted out pronto.

Thanks, Simon.
 
Is it most likely to be the raptor? Or could it be the Maxtor hard drive.

I have had the raptor for less amount of time (not that that is really relevant), but if it is most likely to be the raptor that is ok because I have everything important stored on the Maxtor for when I do re-formats. If it could be the Maxtor then I would need to copy the really important stuff to the raptor as well I guess.
 
Unplug the maxtor HDD and try then. If the ticking is still there than you have found the problem. The ticking noise is the HDD trying to find the sector with data on it that it's trying to read and cant and just going haywire.
 
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