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Hard drive constantly revving up and down

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - Hard drive constantly revving up and down

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alistair mccello   10-04-2009 at 07:16:01 AM

I have a WD SATA drive that I have been using for about a year now and somewhat recently it began making a periodic revving noise. The drive revs up once every 1-3 seconds with the revved up period lasting no longer than 1 second, it starts when I turn on the computer and doesn't stop until it is shut down. I am currently running an AVG scan to make sure, but I have already run a scan since the problem started so I don't think that there is a virus doing something in the background that I am unaware of. I have tried monitoring the File System Activity and Process and Thread Activity with ProcessMonitor, but the only process that is writing anything is AVG at the moment. I have also defragged my C: partition to no effect.

I have had quite a few hard drives die on my in the past, but none have done this before so I am hoping that buying a new drive is not my only option.

Does anyone have any ideas on what might be the problem?

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Bronze Storage badge evongugg   10-05-2009 at 03:36:06 PM

Welcome to the forums!

Check for spyware and trojans filling up your disk.

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Bronze Storage badge evongugg   10-05-2009 at 03:38:26 PM

Check if the free disk space is diminuishing.

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Bronze Storage badge Paperdoc   10-05-2009 at 03:50:13 PM

Are you sure it is the hard drive? Normally a HDD will rev up on start-up and stay at operating speed for a long time. It may shut down after a period of no use, and later rev up when called back into use. But what you describe - rev up, stay at speed for only a second or two, then shut down and repeat - sounds like a completely failed HDD. If that were the case, I would expect you to be writing about a disk that does not work at all, or takes an incredibly long time to find anything.

My computer sounds a bit like this recently, but I'm pretty sure I know why and how to fix. It is not the HDD's, which are pretty quiet. It is the case and/or CPU cooling fans which are under automatic control to speed up when the internal temperature rises, then slow down as temp falls. I need to open the case and clean out the dust, both internally and in the intake air foam filter sheets.

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