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Swapping Hard Drive

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Hi community,

Just finished building my second system. Everything went well, Windows 7 Ultimate installed without any problems and the computer
runs just fine.
My issue is that the hard drive (1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3) is very noisy!! On the first system built in December the same model drive
is inaudible. As both systems have roughly the same specs (i7 860's, 8GB Corsair RAM, Asus motherboards - P7P55D EVO and
P7P55D-E PREMIUM, Sapphire 5870 GPU's and Sony Optiarc DVD's can I swap the drives over to check if it's the drive that's noisy or the fact that the noisy PC has a Lian-Li X2000 case with a Hard Drive caddy system and the quiet one a Lian-Li X1000 has a rubber washer dampened Hard Drive cage.
If I decide to get an SSD drive or change the Spinpoint can I do a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate (Retail) or do I have to clone the drive?
It might seem a small issue as the system runs fine but the constant audible chirping of the drive is ruining an otherwise lovely computer!
Strange thing is I didn't notice the Hard Drive when installing the OS and getting it up and running but only after loading the Asus Utilities software and doing the numerous Windows Updates - could this be software related?

Any input would be greatly appreciated

Regards keith263


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I'm not positive about it, but switching the drives is possible,. You might have to reinstall Windows to get to the point where you can test it. I'm not sure if the retail version ties anything to the board itself or not. The OEM version definitely does, in which case it wouldn't work.

As for adding an SSD later, you would have to install Windows to the drive. You don't have to clone the existing one.

I don't think it's software related. I've got two F3 that are inadible, and I can't think of any kind of software that could make the hardware itself make noise.

I agree with MAdAdmiral, it's not likely software related. The only thing I can think of is that Windows 7 takes a couple days to fully index the HD after a fresh install. That causes extra HD activity until it completes the index.

Hi MadAdmiral and shortstuff_mt,

Thanks for your replies, I was clutching at straws thinking it might be software related!!
Probably a noisy drive and its resonating in the cavenous Hard Drive Caddy bay.
I will give it a couple of days more to check out the indexing theory but I never noticed that on the first build, thats why I was keen to swap drives over to see if there was any difference.
As for adding an SSD and loading the OS on that, will I not still hit a problem as I have already activated Windows 7?

Once again thanks for your input.

Regards keith263

You shouldn't run into any problems, as the OEM versions of Windows tie themselves to the motherboard, not to a drive. The retail version shouldn't tie itself to anything, all it should care about is that it's only being used in one location. Re-registering shouldn't cause any issues.

Hi coldsleep,

Thanks for your post.
You would think this important information about doing a reinstall on a new drive would be easy to find! I did try Windows support but they wanted payment to answer the question as it's not a warranty type of issue.

Regards keith263
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