NotebookForums.com › Forums › Off Topic › Desktop and Hardware Discussion › Dying Hard Drive
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Dying Hard Drive

post #1 of 4
11/7/04 at 11:48pm
Thread Starter 
My primary hard disk drive of my desktop is making those small, quick clicking sounds that the drives normally make when accessed. But it's making them when it is not being accessed (Windows shows HD usage time as 0%). Also, these clicking sounds are usually accompanied by the flashing of the HD LED. But right now only the sound can be heard but the LED is not flashing. There is also a loud clicking noise that I don't think should exist. Could the HDD be dying? The weird thing is, it is making all the applications, even Firefox, run slowly. Is this typical behavior of a dying drive? Thanks for any advice.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 4
11/7/04 at 11:58pm
Typically, clicking is a sign of the hard disk dying. This is the case most of the time, i reccomend grabbing a new HDD and backing up your data before it really does die.

But there is another explanation. Did you install anything in the system recently? A hard drive not getting enough power also makes clicking noises. Namely, a click, then hearing the drive spin up again, accompanied by a slowing down of all programs making use of the hard drive at the moment.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 4
11/8/04 at 1:33am
Yeah that happens with a bad drive. Can come and go once it starts doing that... It's really scary when you do know whats happening, I had that happen to a drive last Haloween day (while I was booting up after installing a TV tuner) and it scared the crap out of me... I immediately cut power when it started doing that.

Thing is, I was using two drives at that time and I did not know which one it was doing it (and to this day did not know). So I spent like an hour in DOS mirroring different data between my two drives until I was confident enough to go on using the machine.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 4
11/8/04 at 3:17pm
Thread Starter 
Luckily I have a spare 160GB drive on hand. I was planning to get an external enclosure but I guess that plan is scrapped. The weird thing is, I was able to successfully get all of my data (about 72GB) off of the dying drive without a problem. The transfer speed, however, was 1/10 of what it should be for a healthy drive. I wonder if the drive will still work after I reformat it. I will keep it in the chassis to find out.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Desktop and Hardware Discussion
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Off Topic › Desktop and Hardware Discussion › Dying Hard Drive