Hard drive making sounds

Hi,
Lately my hard drive has been making some slight noises, like something running. Then it seems to stop the sound. Several times the computer would not boot so I turned it off at the tower, then tried again and it worked.
Does this sound like something should be done???
Thanks.

 

Hi patszy, indeed there should be something done.
it sounds like the hard drive is ready to fail, so I recommend backing up everything that you need to keep if you haven't already done so.
The best is to copy everything you have onto an external USB drive if you have one.
Even better still in this instance would be to use one of the many image making software's available and create a full image of your computer and store that on an external USB hard drive.
Then when the hard drive does finally fail, you replace it with a new one and transfer the image from the external hard drive onto the new one. Your computer is then back up and running as it was.

Nev.

 

Thanks Nev,

I do have things backed up. I have Casper and will do a clone today. I also have things on another external drive and on those little usb drives, plus some "in the cloud", so I guess I am covered.
Just wondered if you thought failure is imminent. This drive is only about three years old and I wonder if I should just get another one before I have the failure???

 

Glad to hear all is backed up. As for the life of a hard drive, we have heard of them failing in the first day of use, but that is rare.
However we all know nothing lasts forever, it is annoying though when the forever gives up early!!

Considering we cannot forecast exactly when your present hard drive finally packs in, I honestly don't know whether it would be best to get a spare drive now, or hang on till the present one packs up as prices are forever changing. You could get one now and in three months the old one packs up, but the same model you bought now is selling at half the price, or it could go the other way and be twice the price.
Since the factories where they are made were wiped out in a major flood around two years ago, pricing on hard drives has been very unpredictable.
The only thing I can say is that if you were to get one and install it now, keeping the old one to one side as perhaps a further backup while it still works, you will at least have peace of mind that you are covered.

Nev.

 

Thanks for all the advice. Right now I have lots of things going on so will wait until things slow down and just hope everything lasts!

 

Just a couple more things, do you have the original rescue disks for re-installing Windows?
Or do you have a rescue boot disk that works with your backup software?

you will likely need one or the other after replacing the hard drive when the old one goes feet up, as the new drive will of course have nothing on it.

Nev.

 

Hi Patzy.Is your Hard Drive just groaning or making clicking sounds?

 

Clicking hard drive ...

click here

They don't all sound like this - but you get the idea

 

Any increase of noise, clicking such as in the video, or a louder whirring sound, grating noises etc. are not good news. The bearing noises in the video as the disk spun up to speed weren't good either.

Nev.