Help with Hard Drive?

[dwinx]

I have a Dell D610 laptop. When I started it up this morning, I noticed a slight buzzing that sounded unusual. Almost like soft wood being sanded, but much much softer. Since the hard drive is the only rotating element (aside from fan) that I know of, I am concerned my HD is going to go kaput. Any thoughts? Am I just being paranoid?

Thanks,

Robert

[bishop]

how old is it?

[sir-understeer]

Well, if you start to notice a very sluggish machine, as in programs are starting to take much longer to start up, even Windows, and hear that sound, then yes, I would say your HD is about to take a crap.

My wife's Latitude D600 exhibited that behavior that I described, it literally took 5 minutes to start WinXP up, and would take about 2 minutes to open up a Firefox browser window, plus the HD was making a whining noise, so a few clicks later on Newegg, and I got her a 120GB HD to replace her's for $75 shipped.

It took about 3 minutes to actually take the old HD out and pop in the new one, then took a couple more hours to reinstall WinXP and all the other programs and such. It runs a billion times better, and much quicker too, as the old HD took a crap gradually, so the laptop ran slower and slower, until it almost didn't run at all.

[squidbrain1]

Well it could be that there are too many programs on start up, i.e many programs trying to start up on boot instead of manualy starting them instead. These programs are things such as Limewire, Azuerus and other applications. Take a look at what programs might be running 'behind the scenes' or mabey without you knowing. Just Cntrl>Alt>Delete and then goto processes click on 'User Name' and all of the programs or 'image names' that are being run will come to the top of the list. End process on the image names or apps that you dont need. Just dont attempt to close the System 'Image names' that are clearly marked.

[sir-understeer]

There were no extra startup programs, because I keep a close eye on the list of programs that gets started on start up via msconfig.

I config'd my wife's computer, so I know there was nothing that was keeping it at the splash screen for like 5 minutes before going into the GUI, other than a failing harddisk, as it had all the symptoms.

[dwinx]

Mine starts up slower than it did when new, but I have msconfiged it down as much as I can.

The computer is 4 years old I think?

I haven't noticed any performance issues, just the sound. If the sound doesn't sound fatal to y'all, I won't worry about it.

[sir-understeer]

I would keep an eye on it though.

However, it could just be the fans? Maybe one of the fans has so much dust build up on it that it's working triple time just to keep the RPMs up?

[squidbrain1]

If you do get start to worry, replacing the hdd would probably do the trick, and also inexpensive.

[JK123]

To isolate the source of the noise removed hard drive and optical drive and power on.

If you can hear the noise its the fan, you can probably get one on ebay for a few quid or for a few more from dell. I can guide you through fitting it if you need though the dell support website usually has good guides. ( I am assuming it not under warranty anymore - if it is phone dell and get them to replace it for free)

If the noise isnt there put the hard drive back in and power on, if it is the source of the unusual noise it is possible it could be getting near failing. The system has built in diagnostics which are actually quite good, and if you havent wiped the hard drive at some point the 32bit diags are top notch. (you probably also got them on a cd blue if I remember right).

To run the onboard diags switch it off, then power on with the blue Fn key pressed - the diags will run, at a couple of points it will ask for user input, if you dont give it you get an error, the errors will be a code like 1000-0001, if you get an error which isnt because you didnt respond I can look it up for you. the 32bit diags will usually run if present once the onboard finishes, you can select hard drive test from the menus, fairly self explanatory and very accurate. note bad sectors are picked up as an error but dont mean the drive is definatly failing, its only if theres a lot of bad sectors that you need to worry.

If you have an questions Im happy to help

JK

[Mr-Me-II]

If it is the hard drive backup everything you can ASAP. A grinding sound from a hard drive means it has been infected with powder syndrome, which is characterized by the hard drive turning its platters into powder over the course of a week or so. I've had this happen to 3 drives, all Hitachis...

A brand new hard drive can be found under 100 at newegg.com depending on what you are looking for (speed/size). Just make sure you get the right type size/interface)

[squidbrain1]

Lol thats pretty unlucky Mr-Me, suprised, didnt think they were that bad. I'd stick to Samsung though or Seagate, or Raptor

[sir-understeer]

I have never had problems with any of my Western Digital drives, and they're the guys that make the Raptor drives.

I plan on getting another 250GB WD HD soon, so I can put them in RAID 0

[canttouchthis]

ha raid 0 is way overrated in my opinion. It's a pain to get it to work, and you're completly screwed if one hard drive fails. There's something called raid 0/1 where it's like a hybrid. It has 2x the storage of one drive, is faster, and uses 3 drives though. Kinda a weird striping. I think I might try that at some point.

[Flak]

I thought 0+1 used 4 drives:

---------------------RAID 1 ---------------------
          |                              |
------RAID 0---------           -------RAID 0------
|                     |          |                 |
A1                   A2         A1                A2
A3                   A4         A3                A4
B1                   B2         B1                B1

ish.

You have no idea how long that all took to line up