Odd Drive noises etc, grinding?

[alecjahn]

Well, my HD has been making some weird noises... i cant tell if its the sound of grinding or if its the platter arm bouncing/getting caught somewhere...

The thing is, my hard drive works perfectly up to that point, and my computer only seems to do it under high stress for a long ammount of time. (as if the computer heating up might make a difference?) Ill be running a system-wide virus scan from Panda Antivirus Platinum, and at some random point it starts. This doesnt happen all the time it could happen at any time, like maybe installing a game after my computer has been on all day.

Its like a "(click, click.....................bwaAaaaaAAAAAAaaAAAAa)"

Not quite grinding its hard to explain

The drive's a Seagate 30gb.

My Hypothesis:
1. My $chitty power supply (a Deer 300w) at some point has trouble powering the drive, like maybe a jump in voltage... the the drive's internal parts would not be where the drive thinks they are, or maybe a lower voltage would cause things that are normally synchronized to get out of wack...

maybe
2. My ECS mobo installed in that particular system?
3. Could the drive be heating up too much? How could i test this?

Well anyways, if it starts to happen i have to completely turn the system off, as "restarting" via the button in the front doent acutally restart everything, and the problem would still occour.
Even after turning it completely off, i have to let it sit for about an hour before i can load windows without it doing it again. This is why i was thinking it was a heat issue

after i do a proper restart, it works fine.

Maybe the drive's just F***ed. I just doubt it at the moment. its too intermittent

help meh!

 

[wansingct]

Your drive is dead. I've had this happen several times. before you use it again, i would suggest buy another dirve, copy the bad one to the good one and then have fun pulling the old one apart to see how it's broke. if you keep using it you'll lose all your information anywhere from a week to a month after it started making the noise.

 

[killians45]

download the first aid utility. for example, western digital has one. put it on a bootable floppy and test the drive. takes a loonnngggg time but it will tell you if the drive is bad. TEST IT ONLY. The other options in there are for writing zero's to it.

 

[wansingct]

If it's making noise like that it's only a matter of time........the clicking is the read head bouncing off the platter if I remember correctly.

 

[killians45]

yep, sounds like it... I think it's screwed myself. that or its extending the head to far, trying to read past last sect. heard there is a virus that does that, but I dont know for sure. just hear say. I've not seen it, though.