Noisy hard drive experience?

[Matthias]

Hi there,

Just a quick question my brother asked me, that I didn't totally know the answer to. He's purchased four hard drives in 6 years, and a few months after purchasing them, you can start to hear them click and make a noise when files are being copied or read to the hard drive. This is from all brands he's tried - Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, etc. The noise gets louder and louder over the months, until it can wake someone up in the next room.

Is this common? He purchased his fourth hard drive about 9 months ago, and it has started to get louder as well. Is it something he is doing wrong? Or is it normal for them to get louder as they get older? Mind you, we're only talking about several months here, not years! The weird thing is, my old 800 megabyte hard drive from years and years ago, which I still use, is quiet as anything.

I guess they don't make things like they used to...

Cheers,

Matthew.

For people who like peace and quiet - a phoneless cord.

 

[Flinx]

Doesn't sound normal to me at all. How is the ventilation in that system?

Some guru may give u an answer, hang in there.


The loving are the daring!

 

[Woodman]

Drives operating loudly isn't a good thing, when they do that, it's usually a sign of aging. It will eventually fail to operte altogether.

Questions:
1. Did your brother use the same case each time he installed a new drive?
2. Did any of these drives eventually fail? If so, in what way?
3. Did your brother buy all these drives from the same supplier or something?

This might not help, but you could maybe losen the drive screws holding it to the case & see if that helps, because it might just be case vibration.

 

[chandanarahul]

hard drives tend to click before dying. That's all there is to it. either ur brother is as unlucky as me or it's ll the drives are getting way too hot?

 

[Howard]

Try running defrag. When you delete and move stuff, the head has to move constantly to access the info, probably that's what the loud noise is from. Running defrag puts everything back in order. Win 9x: start, programs, accessories, system tools, disk defragmenter.