HD Noise

LeHah

LeHah

212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
I've had this Dell Dimension L800r for a few years now. I booted it up today and it made this old school boot-up/grinding Harddrive noise. You know, the kind you use to hear on a 486. I've never heard the damned PC do this, so I opened her up and took a peak to see what was making noise. Apparently, right around when BIOS boots, my harddrive light goes on like its reading, for about 4 seconds and makes that noise as well as the same noise from somewhere in the back toward my fans. Now, I checked the fans, they're both a'blowin.

Any ideas?
 
It'd be very weird for both your fans and hard drive to be making a coordinated noise.. If it's hard drive, which it very well may be, start backing up immediately.
 
Ok, I rebooted again and the noise is gone. However, now that I'm actually listening to my PC, I'm hearing a very, very soft "tff tff tff" as she boots.
 
BUY A NEW HARD DRIVE NOW! Make sure it is at least as big as your current one.

Install the new drive, remove the old drive. Install Windows and set it up properly (apply all updates - hint: if you're installing XP, disconnect your internet connection. Instsall XP, then enable the firewall with no incoming connections. THen connect your internet connection and update).

Once you have it all set up, make a folder on your new drive. Shut your machine down, and install the old one alongside the new. Boot off the new drive. Copy the files across the old to new. If a file won't copy, make a note of it, and copy something else.

Once a drive starts making noise, you don't have much time. Maybe a few hours, maybe a week. In the meantime, DO NOT USE YOUR COMPUTER! The longer your dying hard drive is run, the more files get corrupted, and the less you're able to copy to your new hard drive.
 
My IBM Deathstar got pretty noisy at some point. Occasionally I can still get it to spin up by beating it with a screwdriver.
 
OK, Im gonna start doing some math to make sure I can afford a new HD as well as being able to afford my trip to Boston + Expenses + Beer Money.
 
While it's good that you've backed up everything seriously important, I do recomment a full backup anyhow - it is a huge PITA reinstalling windows, applying all the patches, reinstalling and setting up all the Wing Commander games you have, etc. Plus all your application settings and stuff. It's annoying at the very least, time consuming and unrestorable at the worst (you usually forget to backup something...).
 
yeah, my old computer hard drive starting sounding like a klaxon and a few days later I lost all my stuff on my computer( a full 40 gigs of stuff) including all my wc savegames and an essay worth 10% of my marks for eng10 ( which I just about failed but managed to copy some stuff from sparknotes). yeah, so thats my two cents in
 
Usually, clicking noises from HDD's mean semi-iminent doom. *hears some clicking noises*

Shit.
I so dont want to buy a new HDD. Prolly C drive anyways, everything major is on D. :)

*starts backing up*
 
Luckily, most of my drives have issues because the OS screws up and I lose my partition tables (or FAT). I've only experienced about 2 real drive deaths (3 including one where the power connector broke completely off the drive). But I'm careful now to keep backups...
 
I had a similar problem with a Dell Dimension a few years ago. Thought at first it was the hard drive, but the computer kept booting up and running fine. Finally discovered it was the fan on the video card.
 
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