[IceFire]

See the topic.  I've got something very loud in my computer....thought it was the video card or the CPU or something....

But I THINK its the HDD.

[an0n]

My computer makes all kindsa noises.

Buzzing, whirring, clicking, rumbling, the occassional orgasmic moan when I forget to unplug the speakers at 3am, coughing sounds, a kind of strange satanic chant......

[Grey Wolf]

Not sure, but I know that HDs can make wierd noises if they're near death. Do you have a SMART-compatible hard drive? If you do, you can run a utility to check the drive's status.

[Fury]

Ice, yes HDD's can make that kind of noise. Better backup soon and confirm your suspicions, if true then I hope it still has valid warranty.

[Grug]

To answer your question, yes they can make noises, but they probably shouldn't.

Does anybody else's computer speak to them?

[Night Hammer]

mine kinda sounds like a jet engine sometimes.....

[Nuke]

that could mean that one of the heads are impacting the drive's surface. it usually makes a loud whining sound. the disks spin at several thousand rpm so it wil make a high frequency sound. also make sure the vent holds arent blocked. thats necissary for drive cooling and though it can run with it blocked it would have no way to cool off, the heat would expand the metal and cause a similar whining shound. likewise it could be partially blocked and making a similar whistling sound. another posibilities is that the lubricants in the drive mechanics are breaking down, that would be bad because theres no way to re-oil a drive without scrwing it up, this is less of a problem though because it will probibly still have a few years of life left in it, however ive seen some samsung drives that make high pitched noises and is totally normal for that model of drive. if the sound started out of nowhere then theres the posibility that your drive may be failing. if i were you id do the most thourogh drive scan that your computer can do. back stuff up and scan your drive often. i dont trust hard drives so i keep tripple redundant backups on my various hard dives and my ipod. buying a new hard drive never hurts, its like an upgrade for now and a replacement for later.

then again it could be one of your fans. at $3 apiece they are responsible for %90 of all sounds your computer makes.  i got well oiled steel fans that i pulled out of a really old amplifier. so i dont have that problem

[Thorn]

I just got a new CPU. Since it runs hotter than the old one, the fan spins at about 3500 RPM instead of 2000. Its about three times as loud now.
Drives are genearlly quiet, unless they're thrashing. If the head is actually touching the platter, then the drive is FUBARed. Beyond help. It shouldnt be functioning at all. Pop the cover off while its running and stick your head near it. It's probably a fan.

[Primus]

My old HD made a loud sound and then died, taking every file to the grave with it..
Now my fan is keeping very loud noises every time I start my PC and I have to gently hit it to quiet it down ...Just waiting when it goes pop.......

[BlackDove]

Mine whines about three times a day. FRrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........the n all is good.

Performs some sort of check I assumed.

[Scuddie]

It could literally be anything.  I have an old WD 20GB drive from like 6 years ago.  One day, as I was transfering it over to an older machine, popped it in, then heard this insanely loud (And I mean LOUD) whine.  Sounded like a regular drive, except amplified maybe by 25 times as loud.  I thought the platters were spinning so fast that they would shatter inside the drive or something.  I was scared to hell, as at the time I couldnt afford a replacement.  I ran every diagnostic known to man...  Well, maybe not every one, but I ran several.  

There were no problems with read/write activity whatsoever.  I did a clean format, used a different power connector, and replaced the IDE ribbon.  The horrendous noise was still there.  So I decided to have fun with it and see how long I can torture it before it went.  I installed XP, did a full 6-part chkdsk (the kind that usually take a day to finish), then a full defrag.  After it was all over, nothing had changed.  It read well, and it wrote well.  Response times were perfectly fine.  

Anyway, it's been almost a year since I have had that drive with an incredible irritating screeching whine, and it hasnt failed me once within the time frame.  However, my current 60GB drive just failed on me without any warning.  Just goes to show you, mysterious noises can commonly be nothing more than a scare.

[Bobboau]

it can make that sound, but it's not a happy sound.

it's sort of like the clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickcl ickclick that my hard drive does right before everything hard locks. (that disck is reserved for temporary files and crap I'm probly not going to need more than once)

[Scuddie]

Bob, when you hear clicking, especially if it sounds syncronized like the ticking of a clock, that thing is already dead.

[Turnsky]

th' pair of barracudas in my possession haven't made any noises thus far..  i was once spooked into thinking that was the case by my radeon's fan buzzing from time to time..

[Thorn]

Originally posted by Scuddie
Bob, when you hear clicking, especially if it sounds syncronized like the ticking of a clock, that thing is already dead.

Actually, no. Not necessarily. Had that happen to me once after a power outage. Would not do a damn thing except click. Warranty was up, so I popped the cover off and looked inside. The read head had got stuck all the way over to the outside (the actuator jammed from the surge when the power came back up or something, I dunno). I 'un-stuck' it. Put the cover back on, and away it went. Still using it.

[Scuddie]

You serious?  I had no idea you could do that.  I'll have to remember that the next time I come across that.

But then again, I've only come across it once, and that was many a year ago.

[IceFire]

Yeah I thought it was the fans too...I haven't unplugged the drives and started things up yet but the PSU fans are deadly silent, the CPU fan seems to be whiring at a much higher pitch than this sound (and its not as loud), and the rest of the case fans I can barely even hear.

There are two drives in my computer and unfortunately they are stacked one on the other.  No solution...the AGP board comes out too far to place them in pays apart from each other.  Unless I can find some sort of 5.25 inch drive bay mounting for a HDD.  Interesting...

Anyways, I'll have to check this out but I'm a bit worried.  Its probably the older drive...its 5 or 6 years old now.  The Seagate I think is pretty silent.

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by IceFire
Yeah I thought it was the fans too...I haven't unplugged the drives and started things up yet but the PSU fans are deadly silent, the CPU fan seems to be whiring at a much higher pitch than this sound (and its not as loud), and the rest of the case fans I can barely even hear.

There are two drives in my computer and unfortunately they are stacked one on the other.  No solution...the AGP board comes out too far to place them in pays apart from each other.  Unless I can find some sort of 5.25 inch drive bay mounting for a HDD.  Interesting...

Anyways, I'll have to check this out but I'm a bit worried.  Its probably the older drive...its 5 or 6 years old now.  The Seagate I think is pretty silent.

yeah, the only way i could find out what was actually making the noise (it was enough to shake the case to a degree) was physically putting a finger on an empty space of board near the suspect device (after i had disconnected the HD's)

put a finger on the leading edge of my radeon's board.. and it was the one that was making the noise..  took it out, took the fan apart, cleaned the dust off it and the heatsink, stuck it back in... and it works fine now, only makes a noist occaisionally..  

anywho.. i'd back up all your important stuff onto CD/DVD, or buy a second hard-drive, and transfer your **** to that.. so you have a little bit of redundency on hand just incase it all goes pear shaped.

[Bobboau]

the drive still works... sort of... any file on it can be assumed to be corupt/unreadable, it can be used for temporary/unimportant files, but like I said it has a habit of hard locking everything else up so I don't use it that oftine.

[pyro-manic]

Icefire: stacking two drives isn't good. I managed to cook a floppy drive by stacking it on top of a HD once. You can get 5.25" mounts for hard drives...

*searches for north American website*

Something like this is what you're looking for.