Noisy hard drive on startup

[kaylor]

My hard drive has recently begun to make a noise while it is spinning up during the boot process. As the PC boots it slowly gets slower like it is noise from the spin rate of the hard drive as it is being read to/from. It eventually sounds normal like it did previously once the boot process is complete. This hd is only 3-4 months old. It is a western digital 80 gb. I had another one do the same thing for a while. It wound up with a CRC error on it which happened to be in my mail file. I was in a hurry and didn't have time to troubleshoot it, so I just put in the new hd. Is the noise a sign of failure?

kaylor

 

[Grenage]

I know exactly what you mean, I've had this happen with one of my own hard drives.

The hard drive worked as fine as ever until I gave them away when I got a new machine a year(or so) later.

Still I could have been lucky and you should backup your work to be sure, if it gets any worse I would consider getting it repaired under the warranty.

 

[firewolfrl]

use the Diagnostic program for the drive.....call the manufacturer and see what they say.
since the drive is so new you might talk to the place you got the drive and see if they will take it back....
they might even let you transfer your data first.
back up the entire drive. HD failure sucks if you have critical data and you have to send the drive to a HD data recovery business and spend several hundreds of dollars.


good luck!

 

[icon58]

I don't know about the newer drives but the older ones had a program on it to make noise. You use to be able to go in the program and tell it to stop making the noise. But as always backups are your best bet.
Icon58

 

[kaylor]

I still have the other HD that still works. I am going to reformat and see if it still does it. That might be interesting. I will also contact the manufacturer. Probably my best bet since it is still new. Thanks for your suggestions!

kaylor

 

[NightHawke]

I had a 100 gig WD1000BB fail on me three months out of the box. TARE and track 0 faults. Fortunately, I had a copy of a drive recovery program and was able to dig myself out of that hole and WD was quite willing to exchange for me a WD1000DB model.. The drive with the 8 meg cache!