Hard Drive going out?

[AndrewRandle]

I just started noticing my hard drive making a high pitched sound while it's just sitting there, or always. I just installed xp and did'nt notice it before. Sometimes it will be louder and sometimes softer. Kinda wierd eh? it's a ibm 20gb. Any ideas?

 

[djones7936]

I would goto

http://www.ibm.com,

go to their support section and find their hard drive diagnostic software. I believe it's called Drive Fitness Test (DFT).

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

After it downloads it, it will probably takes one floppy disk. You boot your computer off the floppy and run the diagnostic program. It will give you a status of your drive, probably some of the initial tests IBM does on it's RMA drives.

Make sure you have SMART enabled when you do the check, (some BIOSs have an option).

I got a brand new 40GB Maxtor a couple days ago. It sounded like a sick cat inside :-(. Installed WinXP, did Windows Update, then it wouldn't boot properly; kept rebooting. I ran surface scanner, fixed the hard drive problem, reinstalled Windows. Seems to be okay now.

I hope this helps, Good Luck!
-Dave

http://home.attbi.com/~djones7936/index.htm

 

[Guest_imported]

Before running any heavy diags on your HDD which might jerk the heads around and cause its early demise, I'd make sure you have a complete backup of your data or even a disk image!

Drives starting to make "unusual" noises should definitely be regarded with suspicion...

Good luck!


ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[AndrewRandle]

Thanks for the info, I ran the quick test for the "DFT" and everything checked out. guess ill do the advanced test, why not right? Mabey im just whining about a sound that's always been there it's just my spider sences picking up the noise ...