Hard Drive squeak

[Sharkey]

My hard drive's recently have had a spot of trouble.

My first hard drive which I had for well over a year died of (I'm assuming) old age (if that's the way to put it). So I bought a new hard drive. From the moment I switched on the computer it was making a funny squeaking noise every few seconds. I continued to use it for 2-3 months. Sometimes it wouldn't squeak at all. Eventually the squeaking was happening constantly on bootup and was extremely rare to make it to windows.

I play games regularly. When I'm playing games it would squeak more often, usually resulting in a freeze for 1-2 seconds a few seconds after the squeak. Occasionaly resutling in a crash.

So I sent the drive back and got a new one. After about 1 month it has started to do the same as the previous drive during games.

I ran SeaTools on both drives. The first failed all tests, this was after I couldn't boot up with it.
The second which I am using still passes all tests despite the squeaking still happening often during games.

And yes, it is definitely the hard drive.

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated. Could it be 2 faulty hard drives? although extremely unlikely.
Or would it perhaps be other hardware causing trouble with it?

 

[bentobaku]

Get a new HDD it sounds to me you where just an unlucky person who got another bad HDD... What brand and type of HDD is it? Its odd you got 2 HDD with the same illness, but i would definitely say that is what happened. Be prepared for another crash. There is something in the HDD that is catching to cause the squeak. You notice it more when you play games cause the HDD is working more often and harder. This is a mechanical problem so there isn't really anything you can do about it unless you happen to be a person who can repair HDDs (very unlikely) themselves. I would contact the manufacture and explain what has happened. Even the last one would have lasted more than a year even with intense use.

 

[DBB2010]

western digital has 3 year warranties for their drives.

if you're hearing anything other than the spin, like clicking or squeaking, there's likely a mechanical failure. you also shouldn't hear a click when you boot or shut down that system.

 

[Sharkey]

The first was Seagate and the second was a Maxtor. They're both same company if I'm correct. I can't remember what my one previous to the troubles was.

 

[bentobaku]

In my opinion... Western Digital all the way. Its all i buy and the last one that went bad on me was 5yrs old and had seen a lot of wear and tear.

 

[DBB2010]

it really depends, i like WD and seagate. for a basic hdd, i'd probably buy WD. for a special model, probably seagate.