I've got a 10GB Quantum hard drive that's about three years old or so. It suits my purposes fine in a K6-2 475 machine, and I don't want to spend any more money on this computer than necessary. At the same time I'm really fond of the computer and intend to keep it cuz it's been completely stable since I built it (thank you Tyan). Since quieting the power supply and CPU fan I've noticed a very audible "winding down" sound coming from the hard drive when shutting down; not a perfectly smooth sound but slightly reminds me of a jet turbine. Don't know if it was there all along or not.
Should I be concerned or does this sound normal?. Haven't noticed this sound on other computers. It would be massive overkill to put a new 60-80GB drive in this machine, but don't want to lose all my data, either.
Thanks.

seems normal to me.. i have a maxtor and an ibm that do that turbine sound when booting up and shutting down. when one of my other drives died (quantum 13gig) it made kind of a clicking/grinding sound, like it was searching.

Completely totally normal. It was there all the time but was drowned out by your other noises. I've got a totally fanless K6-2 system and that's the only noise it ever makes.

Thanks much. Am trying to avoid the temptation to spend any more on this computer, other than minor noise-related things. (Don't have the guts to remove the CPU fan, though...)

Ah, you silence one part of your computer only to notice another is whiny and loud... It's a common tale. HD's are a loud bunch, but they are also some of the cheapest to quiet. Check out the rubber thread for more ideas.

Tom P,

I had a HD fail, generally the whine gets a little louder and louder and it
turns to kind of a scraping sound. Depending on your model and how often
you use it, it may be near the end of it's life span. Just to be safe, backup your data.

A few months ago I read an article on www.tecchannel.de about the consequences of running IDE drives all day long. They also had some sound files of dying drives... I'll try to find it!
TheEagleCD

Damn! I found the article (http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/964/3.html) but you can only view the first 3 or 4 pages because then you'd have to register in order to see the rest. Sometimes (e.g. at this very moment) this endless registering really gets on my nerves...
I'll check with a buddy to see whether he has kept the soundfiles (we used to use them as our windows startup sounds;) But I doubt that they survived his last reformat....
Regards,
TheEagleCD
P.S. I definitly agree with MacGuyver: make sure to backup your data regularly...

Also use scandisk to check the surface, do a thorough scan. This will take quite long but it will check for any bad sectors, which is a indication of the hard drive beginning to have failure.

If you do find bad sectors reguarly check it say once a week and see if it gets worse. If it slowly deteriates then get yourself a new drive.

If you don't find any you are probably pretty safe to keep for longer.

Hmm, maybe it's time to overcome laziness this weekend and actually use my old CD-writer for something useful. Backing up at work is easy but for some reason laziness sets in at home. Thanks all for the advice. BTW, it's pretty evil to have a breaking hard drive as a startup sound (g) ...

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php has a program which (amongst other things) will have a little chat with your hard drive and give you some sort of pointers toward its health
a bit cryptic, but possibly usefull.

IBM use to have a page with some sounds of head crashes and others that are now on the new Hitachi Website.
The most annoying and freaky sounds. Horrible.

I love to sounds....but only as long as they don't come from my drives
On the other hand I have to say that the sounds I had (from tecchannel.de) were worse. Though, I Can't say why! Maybe it was worse for me 'cause it was the first time I'd heard them...

My Maxtor D740X has just started to make a loud whining noise too! It's six months old and until now has been really quite. The noise is a bit like the whine TVs sometimes make, or fridge motors. The 'turbine' noise on start up and wind down doesn't go away anymore!! Bearings?

The good news is that Mesh say they will send out an engineer to replace it. I'm assuming they will be able to clone the drive? I've backed up everything important.

BTW After reading articles on this site, I tried sliding the drive case out of its position underneath the CD drive and sitting it at the bottom of the case. I found that this dramatically reduced noise. The HD is still attached to its chassis but sits on a bit of foam. The cheapest noise reduction ever!?