Squealing Hard Drive Yesterday, no prob today.

**eedmond** · August 29th, 2004, 02:26 AM

This is weird. The other day my mom calls me up and has me rush over because her computer is squealing like a pig. I come over and find it sitting at the Memory Countdown screen saying the HD failed to boot. The squealing was nasty and I assumed something inside had died. I took the case off and listened and it was the HD making the awful squealing.

So I shut the computer down and tell her i have to download maxtor's software to test it and get a code so I can try to RMA it.

I come back today and put the disk in and it finds NOTHING wrong with it. So I yank the disk out and boot it up and low and behold Win2k boots up as if nothing had happened. No corrupt data, no loss of data, nothing.

This does not make sense to me because normally when a part fails it doesn't get healed and not lose something.

Anyway this also frustrates me because this is a fairly new HD. I had it in my computer up till about 6-8 months ago when it died in my computer and I RMA'ed it and they sent me a new one (this one). While waiting for the replacement I had bought another so I put this one in my mom's computer. Unfortunately apparently the warrenty for the replacement is on the same warrenty as the original because it expired on 7-30-04.

I hope to talk them into replacing it anyway since it was a replacement drive in the first place. So if it all of a sudden starts working ok now then it will be that much harder for me to get them to agree to replace it.

Anybody heard of anything like this happening before?

**Ferrit** · August 29th, 2004, 09:41 AM

Sounds like maybe heat caused the malfunction in the first place.
So when you went back and it was cold that might be why it didnt do it.
In any case get the info needed copied off so if it does go ya wont loose it

**eedmond** · August 29th, 2004, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

Sounds like maybe heat caused the malfunction in the first place.
So when you went back and it was cold that might be why it didnt do it.
In any case get the info needed copied off so if it does go ya wont loose it

Well the odd thing is the HD has been in that computer running 24/7 without heat issues since I put the HD in the computer 6-8 months ago. No changes were made. It made it through much hotter days this summer than the other day without problems too.

<shrug>

**Ferrit** · August 29th, 2004, 10:19 AM

True true but hardware being hardware, today it works tommorow its broke.
Starting it and then testing it when the harddrive is cool may well not produce the noise or the errors.
But when it has run for several hours and heated up then it may begin to make noise and produce errors

**NooNoo** · August 29th, 2004, 06:02 PM

any fur caught in the case anywhere?

**eedmond** · August 29th, 2004, 07:14 PM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

True true but hardware being hardware, today it works tommorow its broke.
Starting it and then testing it when the harddrive is cool may well not produce the noise or the errors.
But when it has run for several hours and heated up then it may begin to make noise and produce errors

But I have never heard of Broke yesterday, works today though.

Well it has been on since I posted this originally and it is still on and working. I have noticed with this model of HD both my original and this replacement one that they do get quite hot. But I just checked my 2 SATA 150 drives that are the exact same model number except for the SATA vs. ATA num in the model number. They seem to be hot but not quite as hot as the ATA version. Guess I will get a HD cooler and put it on it and see how it goes. But I also have a old 20GB Maxtor HD and it gets just as hot as the 160GB does.

<shrug> Will mess around with it and make sure my mom doesn't keep anything critical on it until it finally dies.

**SalmonFisher** · August 30th, 2004, 03:31 AM

Back up your data ASAP...

My bet is the spindle bearings are giving you signs of possible failure in the near future. Personal experience: I've never been a fan of Maxtor, Seagate or IBM drives (now Hitachi and still wouldn't trust them either). Have had my share of Maxtors over the years.

Personally I prefer Western Digital but they're showing some 'quality' issues as well in certain models.

The nice thing is drives are relatively cheap now.

Safe bet is the drives are sealed off quite well so you can bet there's no outside source of dust, dirt, dander, etc. in the platter chamber.

Good Luck!

SalmonFisher

**TechZ** · August 30th, 2004, 05:00 AM

With HDD being as cheap as they are today, its easier to go for RAID, rather than worry too much about which brand youre going for, other than for FUjitsu, which is hated in this FORUM! Everyone else has an opinion on hdd and their quality.

**eedmond** · September 1st, 2004, 08:04 PM

Well, It crashed again today. I called Maxtor and the guy basically told me I am SoL because the warrenty expired on 7/31/04 and it died on 8/30/04. This sucks because this is a brand new replacement hd for a previous one that failed as well.

Guess I will start buying WD's and other brands than Maxtor. Sucks for Maxtor because I buy about 10-20 hd's a year and it sucks for me because they have such good rebates on their hd's.

Oh well.

**Luxman** · September 2nd, 2004, 04:09 AM

Ahh Maxtor. Let's see....just replaced a failed one 4 months ago, and purchased another Maxtor. My gut instinct was not to do so. Installed it anyhow and had a brand spanking new hd that vibrated so badly I was afraid some of my cards might vibrate out of their sockets.

Goodbye Maxtor, hello Western Digital. Is this thing on?