My hard drive all of a sudden is making that crackly loading noise(hard to describe the noise, but whenever it is loading a program it happens a lot). Now for some reason it is making like a seconds worth of "loading noise" like every 5 seconds. What is making it make that noise? Is there any way to make it quieter at least?
Do whatever you want. I gave you my opinion. I would immediately copy everything from that drive to another. But then, I've had many drives go bad, both new and old.New drives are cheap, both in price and quality.
And I use many after market, meaning non M$ programs for file manipulation, so I see things differently.
hey thanks for your opinion, i just would like to hear from other people out there. any way to lessen that stupid noise? I notice every time it makes that noise a red light flickers on with the noise on the front of the computer. Something i can just unhook? any help, well, helps.
Duhh, is this your first computer?
That flickering light is there to let you know there is HDD activity.
Call your hdd or computer people and get some help, soon.
Anytime the hard drive start's making load noises, it's a good idea to replace it. It could just be a bearing going bad. When I had a drive that was making loud noises at startup, it ran fine for another 2 years. But I would at least start transfering the important data to another hard drive just in case. It could last 3 years or it can fail tomorrow, but it has given you fair warning that something is not right.
The noise can not be made less noticable, the way computers are designed any noise dampening materials will also trap heat, which is something computers don't need.
Grakel: Insulting forum members now? Is this your first forum account?
The hard disk may not be going bad unless the noise is very loud, and the continuous noise every 5 seconds may be a program automatically referencing data - msn does this (although not as often as 5s).
I suggest you back up the data to an additional hard drive, but leave the drive as is.
If you'd like to quieten down your hard drive anyway and have a spare 5 1/4" bay (the ones where DVD drives go) you can buy one of these to silence the beggar:
http://www.xoxide.com/nexus-drive-a-way-black.html They work wonders for my hard drives.
Something you should know:
Hard disks contain multiple 'discs' inside them that store data, and the grinding noise hard disks always make is when the drive heads switch between them. If you don't use much storage on the drive, you may only ever need the first platter, so the noise will be subtle. Once you start using additional platters (for example, after you use more than 25% of your space - this figure may vary) the drive needs to switch between the two, making the grinding noise suddenly more noticeable. This is why a sudden increase in noise doesn't necessarily mean your drive is bad. Of course, if the noise is unpleasantly loud then there's definitely something amiss.
If you've never heard your hard disk before, again don't worry, typically in stock PCs hard disks aren't as loud as the cooling fans so their noise is often unnoticed.
i have an old computer that my mum and dad gave me because they are replacing it with a newer and faster one.i have used it for a while and the hard drive makes a noise all the time not just when starting up or shutting down. but this has started years ago and the hard drive still works fine. there is nothing wrong with it except the noise it makes
