HD Makes Grinding Noise

[dcinmich]

Whenever I am downloading something, installing updates, or doing anything that involves HD activity I can hear this low grinding sound coming from the HD. It's not very loud but it is annoying at times, especially when it's quiet. I am just wondering if this is normal or something I should be concerned about?

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

If it's always been like that, may just be how the drive is mounted or a quirk of the case design.

If case, the side panels may be resonating at the relevant frequency. Old hd drives were a lot noisier and on an early PC case I applied damping (on the inside !) using a small sheet of roof tar/aluminium foil that had been left by some builders.

Probably piece of rubber or even timber glued in would help.

 

[jsc]

I don't know. If I had a drive that I even thought was making grinding sounds, I'd back everything up and replace the drive immediately.

 

[dcinmich]

If it's always been like that, may just be how the drive is mounted or a quirk of the case design. If case, the side panels may be resonating at the relevant frequency. Old hd drives were a lot noisier and on an early PC case I applied damping (on the inside !) using a small sheet of roof tar/aluminium foil that had been left by some builders. Probably piece of rubber or even timber glued in would help.

fihart, thanks for the reply. My HD (Seagate Barracuda ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA) is just over a year old. It has always made this type of noise so I wasn't sure if it was normal or not. I've never had any issues with the drive, other than the noise.

I don't know. If I had a drive that I even thought was making grinding sounds, I'd back everything up and replace the drive immediately.

jsc, thanks for the reply. I do have an external back up HD (acomdata PureDrive 500GB External HD PDHD500USE-72). This is just over a year old as well. I bought it about the same time I bought my SeaGate. I'm not sure about replacing the internal HD, since the only issue is the noise, which I'm still not sure is just a normal sound the drive makes.

 

[somethinghere]

It's normal for mechanical hard drives to make low noise when writing data... Level of noise you can hear depends on the drive itself (generation, number of plates, silencing technology), your computer case (thick metal cases allow less noise to be heard and have sturdier mounts) or even fragmentation...

Run SeaTools (works even with WD or Samsung drives!) to be sure that drive is working fine. If it is, than little noise is nothing to worry about...

 

[dcinmich]

somethingthere, thanks for the reply. I do have SeaTools already so I will give that a try sometime today.

 

[dcinmich]

I ran SeaTools and both HDs passed. Funny thing is the main HD didn't make any of that grinding noise during the tests. So I guess that's just the normal noise they make when downloading, accessing files or running programs.

 

[dcinmich]

Best answer selected by dcinmich.