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Hard Drive making loud grinding noise

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  • Computers
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Storage
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July 28, 2014 9:20:51 AM

I was using my desktop computer that is a few years old when I accidentally bump the tower (while running) while checking the connection on a DVD drive cable. All the sudden I hear a loud, terrible grinding sound coming from the computer, and I immediately pull the plug. I suspect the worst, the hard drive is probably shot. I unplug the dvd drive from the power supply just in case, wait a few minutes, and re boot the computer. I hear the hard drive whirring up to speed like normal, only to be followed by the loud grinding sound, so I again immediately unplug the computer. I'm almost 100% sure the sound IS coming from the hard drive, and I am just wondering if the computer would be safe to boot up to immediately make a backup of it, or if that would rip the hard drive platters to shreds. There wasn't anything too important on the computer like taxes or documents or anything, I just used it for playing minecraft, but I would like to keep the stuff on there if at all possible. I'd like to avoid paying for a professional hard drive recovery service, but I'm not sure if it is okay to boot the computer up to make a backup in the state its in.

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a b G Storage
July 28, 2014 9:25:53 AM

Are you sure this isn't a fan hitting a wire or a fan with a broken blade? You can pull the power cable from the HDD and power up the system to find out.
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July 28, 2014 9:35:35 AM

junkeymonkey said:
its done best back it up and replace it heres some advice from another thread on grinding noise

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2235407/black-gr...


So you are saying that I should attempt to turn on the computer and backup to an external device, I know that I'll need to replace the drive, I guess I should have made my question a bit clearer.
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a b G Storage
July 28, 2014 9:39:44 AM

unless your like me and theres nothing on it you cant easily replace yes back up all you don't want to loose cause it may work 10 more years or 10 more min. it may ''grind'' to a halt right now
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a b G Storage
July 28, 2014 9:45:16 AM

Yes backup just to be on the safe side, really you need ot be backing up data all the time. proactive and not reactive. Not a good method to backup data as the hard drive is failing. Hard drives are cheap, just get a second hard drive and use syncback or other free program to auto backup important files/folders to the other drive. You can take it one step furthr and create backup images of your entire hard drive. I have all 4 windows PCs in my house backup the whole drive once a month to the file server.

With that said, it is very possible that the noise you are hearing is not a drive but just a fan. Once your files are secure, take off the side of the case and carefully listen to where the sound is coming from.
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