Hard Drive Squeal

blibbax

I recentley installed a new Arctic Cooling CPU cooler, to reduce the noise from my PC. I can know hear a very quiet high pitched squeal coming from my secondary hard drive - a WD1600BB.

I'm guessing that the noise was there before, but I don't know for certain becaue I wouldn't have been able to hear it.

To the best of my knowledge, this would normally mean that it's about to fail, but I find this unlikely for a two year old WD which hasn't exactly had a history of abuse.

Does anyone know a solution?

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mkk

Most desktop harddrives give off a more or less hearable high pitched whine from the rotating discs and motor. It's probably the most common reason for people putting foam based silencing products inside their cases. Some cases are also a lot more open than others, which makes it much easier for the high pitched sound to reach the users ears. High pitched noise tends to be very positional so sometimes it can be enough to simply move the case to a different position.

GigaWatt

i agree with mkk, the noise doesn't mean that you HDD is about to fail, it's probably just how the drive works... i've had that problem with a Maxtor 80GB HDD for some time now... it's still up and running...

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Judas

if it's producing variable squeals that don't sound like a head on the platters moving while accessing data (aka there is no activity and there is variable squeals still occurring) then it's likely a case of a hardrive failing. But who knows it could run for another hour or could run for 10 more years.

When it was manufacturered really doesn't matter as drives come partially working, partially failed, dead/working/etc. all the time right out of the box.

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Mousey

If the drive's 2 years old and has been well treated then i doubt it's about to fail, it's probably just noise you haven't noticed before. Was your previous system or any of the components in it loud? Chances are you just didn't hear it before like i said.

Try enabling S.M.A.R.T in the BIOS for that drive and see if anything iffy comes up just in case though

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blibbax

Thanks for the reassurance.

The hard drive only makes the noise for between a few minutes and an hour or so after loading windows. There is no noise while the PC boots.

My previous CPU cooler was a foxconn which really did drown out any nearby light aircraft.

What's S.M.A.R.T?

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GigaWatt

well, that is what i was trying to say about my Maxtor 80GB HDD .

it's a capability that most of the HDD drives have, you can define if the drive's S.M.A.R.T. capabilty is turned on or off under BIOS. the name is short for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology... basicly the HDD self monitores itself and reports if some of the values (for example the drive temp, the drives RPM, the number of working heads, etc...) is within some predefined normal ranges, for example between 0 and 255, 0 being the worst possible scenario and 255 being the best (it's just an example, it doesn't mean that the ranges are just like i described them ). so, the purpose of the S.M.A.R.T. capability that most drives have is to warn the user if some of the predefined values are out of their normal working conditions... it also makes statistics if the drive is going to fail or if it's going to run for another 10 years (as Judas put it ) and returnes those statistics to the user...

that is about it... hope i explained it the right way...

for more info: S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Mousey

you've got no problem then if it's only for a few minutes to an hour, it's probably just the drive warming up.
When i used to use a PCI-E Radeon X1550 whenever i booted from cold the fan would grind like crazy for like 5 minutes or so then it would be fine again as the card reached sub-atomic temperatures

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blibbax

Thanks, I'll take a look next time I'm in my bios.

Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable explanation.

Thank you all again for your help.

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TheAscension

I've had some noisy drives in the past and they've been running for years. I have a Hitachi drive that will squeal intermittantly throughout the day and it's been running fine for over 5 years. I wouldn't worry too much. Just make sure you've backed up your important data.

BlueMak

If I was a person who places bet, I would bet on the HDD dying sooner than later.
Get a replacement ASAP is my advice.

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blibbax

Hmmm. The hard rive is non essential and contains non essential data (older games and patches mostly), so I'm willing to wait for it to fail if there's any doubt.

I might check if anything on there is worth backing up to usb all the same though.

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