Prelude to HDD death?

NeuromancerWGDD'U

NeuromancerWGDD'U

New Member
Earlier today I was running disk defragmenter, and out of nowhere (it's never done this before) my hard-drive started making a series of very loud and rapid noises that can only be explained as grinding/chirping noises (oddly enough, it sounded like it was chirpin' out the tune to the santie-claws/boogie man song from "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). It's stopped since, but it's a seven year old 15 gig hard-drive, and honestly, I was expecting it to start coughing up blood years ago. I don't think I've ever even heard it before (save for VERY rare clicking noises when it's seeking under a heavy load), not even back when it was in my quiet computer. Now it sounds a bit like it's straining, even under light loads, and I'm not sure if it's finally dying, or if something else is happening. It makes medium/loud clicking noises now (I can tell because I have a very loud fan setup on my case, and I can still hear the drive over the fans).

Anybody know what it could be? I want to just wait a few months so I can get the 160 gig drive I've had my eye on, but I don't know if I should be backing stuff up now, or if it's safe for me to hold off. ?
 
I say never relay on a harddrive as your only backup. If your primary drive(this one) is the only one you have your stuff on, I'd say get is backed up ASAP. Being that old, I too am suprised it's still working. I think it's end is near...
 
It makes medium/loud clicking noises now
Click to expand...

Yes I would back up your files as soon as possible as The_Other_One said. That clicking noise usually means its dead or about to die. That's how my old one went...I was reformatting it after after the process was complete it died. All I get is a clicking noise and it freezes at startup. So yeah back your stuff up now if you need anything!
 
Oouch! It got worse!

Well, a couple of hours after posting this thread, the situation went all pear-shaped. It came up with the BSOD, and after I restarted It kept telling me that both partitions were completely full (the primary had 3 gigs free, the secondary had 1 gig free). I tried to use Scandisk, and another BSOD came up, but this time it didn't load right back up. Luckily I had JUST finished copying everything to the hard-drive from another computer. I formatted the disk, reinstalled Windows, and everything seems to be fairly stable (finally had an excuse to get rid of that irritating partition :P ). It's still louder than it was previous to the first incident, so I'm expecting it to die pretty soon, but at least now I have everything backed up (temporarily; it's not my drive). Durnit.
 
kof2000 said:
i have a 1.2gb hdd from 1994 and it is still working!!!
Click to expand...
Methinks it's time to update ;) . I use my computer for gaming, and since I only had 14 gigs free to game (and 3 were eaten by a useless partition) I had to switch out which games I had installed. In a week I would swap, on average, about 3 gigs worth of data, just from changing games! I think that may be why it's dying...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top