HDD on the fritz!!!??

[Maveric169]

I am really not sure what sound it is that I am hearing. It just started yesterday, but it sounds like my HDD spinning down. I don't think it is my CDrom drives as there are no cd's in them. Thing is I never hear it spin up, just a sorta high pitched sound of something spinning down.

If it is my HDD, could this be a sing that my drive is failing? I have never heard my HDD ever before. But the sound that I am hearing is very similar to the sound of a CD-rom spinning down. I haven't made any changes that I can think of that would cause my HDD to need to spin down.

Any thoughts?

Is there any HW tests that can be run to see if my drive might be failing? I have that S.M.A.R.T. thing but it always says everything if OK, but not sure I trust that.

If anyone thinks that it might be my drive starting a downward slide to oblivion, what is the best way to back up the whole drive? I have 3 partitions and if the drive is failing, then I would want a backup that I could copy onto another drive and basically dup the drive so the new one is the same as my current.

 

[dreamliner77]

Look in power management options and see if you have the drives set to spin down after a period of inactivity. If so, disable and see if the problem reoccurs.

The best way to backup is probably to use Norton Ghost or DriveImage.

 

[Maveric169]

Yea, that was the first thing i checked, but it is not set to power down the drives ever, and as I run SETI 24/7 there should be enough activity to keep the drive from going into standby.

 

[dreamliner77]

Try running the diagnostic tools from your drives manufacturer

 

[Mainframeguy]

you need to let us know if you have another drive - or what backup you have - and if the answer is none then you need to ask for posts on how to put somethng in place ...

(Because even if the sound is benign - take it as a good hint to put something in place for when you hear a REAL head crash¬!!!)

 

[Maveric169]

Ok, well today I ran every test imaginable on the drive, including the ones from WD, and everything says there is nothing wrong and no failures of any kind. I currently do not have a good back up, I have a backup of some of my essential programs but that is it. I do have another 80 gig WD HDD at my house in Cali and am considering having it shipped to me just in case and do a basic rebuild of the file system. Once I get everything on the new drive, I can formate the other drive and use it as a backup drive or something, or see if I can get it replaced under warentee. (would they even do that for a drive that is just suspect?)

The last test that I can run is an extended burn-in test that stresses the hell out of the drive and checcks for ANYTHING that goes wrong. But it takes like 9 hrs, so I will run that overnight and see what happens.

Question: If it was you, how would you deal with this situation?