Hard Drive? Strange Noises

[roadster]

I have 2 hard drives a Maxtor 200 gb and a WD 40 gb. As I sit here something is making a strange noise. There is one beep and then what sounds like the heads on one of the drives moving to and from the home position (just like the sound when you first power on the pc in fact). This happens as frequently as 5 or 6 times a minute but then all goes quiet for a while. Am I looking at immenent HD failure?:(
Everything seems to be working OK at the moment.

Howard (rushing to back up both drives):eek: :eek:

XP SP2 on Athlon XP200 + 1gig ram

[roadster]

Strange...............just backing up c drive to d drive and no strange beeps or clicks:confused:

Just going to back up d drive over the network to this pc's drive to be on the safe side.

Howard

[roadster]

Loads of bleeps and clicks for 20 seconds..........I'll wait for the backup to finish

[bhxtyrant]

I have had similar issues in the past (excepot in my case all i got were the clicks,no beeps) about a week or so later the hard drive died on me.Luckily i made backups.Odd's are your probally in the same situation.The whole beeping kinda makes me think it may be another piece of hardware.The hard drive may be causing the "clicking" but i highly soubt it's causing the "beeps".

[jeffj1111]

We had odd "head slap" type noises out of some Quantum Fireball (how appropriate! all your data, up in flames!) drives -- which were followed by imminent failure, lots of cussing, then finger-pointing from Gateway and the manufacturer. So we learned our lesson there. Backup now and prepare, for there are only 2 types of drives: those that HAVE failed, and those that are ABOUT TO FAIL.

The beeps are still a mystery, though...?

[Linedawg]

From where i work that sounds like the HDD is about to die on you. The HDD that is making the sound will most likly have a hareware failure some time in the near future. If it dose crase before you back up your data there is a tool you can use to recover lost data. Date recovery (http://www.bitmart.net/) now i have seen this tool take any where from 1 hour to three weeks to recover data off an hard drive before.

[roadster]

New hard drive arrived yesterday, tried to ghost the data to it but old drive was just about to give out, lots of clicking and bleeping (the bleeping was coming from the drive itself:confused: :confused: ) so recovered from the backup I did last week.

All is now well in the Roadster household:)

Thanks

[rik]

Sounds like you have a perfect opportunity to try this:

http://www.techzonez.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16429&highlight=freezer

[bhxtyrant]

ANother case solved by TZ :p you are fortunate many are to late to recover data by the time the drive gets that bad.I'm really interested in the "bleeping" coming from the drive.I have never seen this before.

[Linedawg]

I have hear a beeping sound from a HDD before what it was the arm inside the HDD is hitting the platter inside the hard. That happons some time when the plater gets warped ( Some how i dont realy know how it happons) but i have only seen that happon 2 times in the last 8 years

[bhxtyrant]

Thanks for the info Linedawg :) hmm thats interesting to me.My only guess would probally be perhaps the warping is caused by extensive heat? (any TZ vets know of this)