[andrewanimation]

Hello,

At least one of my two fairly-new hard drives started to be much louder and more annoying only just today, having louder chirping than before, calming down only for a couple of seconds occasionally. Is there anything I can do to keep the noise down? Or any explanation why it became louder?

Both hard drives are:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB Hard Drive - 7200, 8MB, Serial ATA-300
I bought them only about 3 months ago, brand new, off newegg.com, I believe. No changes to the system recently or to the programs or processing power I used today.

Thanks

[serverguy]

You could try deferagmenting them but I doubt this will help if they are new. They can get fragmented when you copy lots of stuff to them.

[andrewanimation]

i ran the defrag, but still, some days it's quiet, like yesterday, and other days, like today, it's loud

[serverguy]

OK, I think that your hard drive is probably fine but a little error checking will do no harm.

First, I would run the disk checker that is built in to Windows.


These instructions should be the same for XP and Vista.

1. Open My Computer by double-clicking on the icon on the desktop.
2. Right-click on the drive letter that you wish to check for errors (usually C:) and click on the Properties menu item.
3. Choose the "Tools" tab and click on the Check Now... button.
4. Two options are available in the next window:
   • Automatically fix file system errors will correct many file system errors detected.
   • I suggest you tick this box.
   • Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors will perform a search for areas of the hard drive that may be damaged or unusable. If found, this tool will mark those areas as "bad" and prevent your computer from using them in the future.
   • I suggest you tick this box as well.
5. Click Start.
6. Allow the Error Checking program to run its course until complete.
7. Restart the PC if prompted to do so.

This should bring you back a clean bill of health. That is fine and expected with a new disk.

If it does bring any errors back please post them in your next post and skip this next step.


If it is all OK then download Seatools for Windows

Save it to your desktop to find it easily later.

This is a utility that Seagate offer for free. It may discover something that the built in Windows one doesn't.

Once it is downloaded double click on the icon on your desktop. Click through the installer accepting the default values.

Once you have finished go to your Start Menu - All Programs - Seagate - Seatools for Windows - Seatools for Windows.

The program will scan your computer for supported drives.

Once it opens tick the boxes next to your two Seagate Hard Drives.

Then go to Basic Tests and click on Long Drive Self Test

Please be aware that this might take some time to finish but you can still use your computer while it runs.
Let this run through and post back what it comes up with. I doubt that it will find anything but it just might.


Do you notice the noise come up after you write anything to the disk or is it totally random when it happens?

Also, what raid configuration if any are the drives set up in?

Thanks