I think my HDD is giving up on me, what do you think?

[edijs]

Its making this weird humming noise, which alternates from silent to louder and so on (I think that you can imagine that it is almost impossible to work at a workstation with this noise nagging on the nerves all the friggin' time). It is not constant, it seems to change the iteration time when under load or idling. If I take it out, and have it not touch the PC case, then everythings just as it was a couple of months ago, but when I put it back in (no matter how well I fixate it to the case), it starts to hum and vibrate again. Seems as though the drives vibration + the natural vibration of the case amplify everything. Anyway, this is something new that appeared a couple of weeks ago. I have not seen any decay in performance or operations, but I thought I'd be preemptive and do something about it - ie - get a new goddamn drive and transfer to that drive. What do you think? Any similar experiences.

PS. the drive's a Samsung SATA2 200GB (see sig.)

 

[RHochstenbach]

You could try running the Samsung HUTIL diagnostics software to look for any problems with the drive. You can download an image for a floppy disc or CD From this page.

Are you running Windows Vista or Windows 7? You could try disabling the Windows Search service, because it constantly indexes all files on your hard drive which could produce more noise/vibration if the amount of files increases.

 

[edijs]

I run Win7 Pro x64

Yes, I should probably try some diagnostics software.

About the indexing: I think I have it removed, but I don't really think that that would make that much of a difference, because when I push the Power button on my PC, all the fans start working and it sounds like a serverroom, but then, like one second after that, the HDD fires up and the humming begins. the HDD sound is noticeably lower and it sounds like it has a hard time to spin up.