[yo-mike]

I think my HDD is dying on my oldish G4. When it spins down it makes a "whinning-down"
sound. I just did a CCC of it and I think I better do another.

Is this a dying sound? Also, it sounds unrealistically loud for reading and writing.

What sounds did your dying HDD make?


-Mike

[J'nathus]

Dying hard drives have all manner of sounds. The worst I've seen is the head crash... in which it makes a stuttering sound... dita dita dit!

Depending on the age of the drive, the noise level can simply go up. However a drive that's making a LOT more noise than it used to might be breaking down in the moving parts area.

The theory I always stick with is to ALWAYS have a backup, and once a drive reaches the ripe old age of 5, I look into replacements. I've been burned by enough dying drives that I don't just plan for their failure, I expect it and do my best to avoid it.

[yo-mike]

J, on June 14th 2009, 02:24 AM, said:

Dying hard drives have all manner of sounds. The worst I've seen is the head crash... in which it makes a stuttering sound... dita dita dit!

Depending on the age of the drive, the noise level can simply go up. However a drive that's making a LOT more noise than it used to might be breaking down in the moving parts area.

The theory I always stick with is to ALWAYS have a backup, and once a drive reaches the ripe old age of 5, I look into replacements. I've been burned by enough dying drives that I don't just plan for their failure, I expect it and do my best to avoid it.

Yes, it's quite old. Past 5 by I think a couple years.
When I performed a CCC it was almost unbearable to listen to.
I think I'll hammer smash it once it's replaced.

-Mike

[Bernie]

Have you tried WD-40?

Seriously, 5 years does seem to be a good age at which to replace a hard drive (if your data is valuable).

[yo-mike]

Ha Ha. WD-40 isn't for anything computer related. The closest product you *might* use on *something computer* related
is contact cleaner. But that's generally used for industrial, electrical, etc.

It's an IBM DeskStar Circa 2001. Not bad for a 8 year old Drive. - I've used older without much problems.
I'm replacing it tonight.

-Mike

[J'nathus]

yo-mike, on June 14th 2009, 02:14 PM, said:

It's an IBM DeskStar Circa 2001. Not bad for a 8 year old Drive. - I've used older without much problems.

I had Deskstar GXP drives... those all met early deaths. Hence the "Deathstar" moniker they earned. They were sensitive drives in those days. My latest favorite is Seagate.

[Frigidman]

Screeeee-chuggachugga-waHOOOS-BANG-tinkle-tinkle.

...

<_<

[yo-mike]

Frigidman, on June 14th 2009, 05:32 PM, said:

Screeeee-chuggachugga-waHOOOS-BANG-tinkle-tinkle.

...

<_<

Very creative of you Frigidman. Actually that's about what it's been sounding like minus the bang.(Yet)
Yes, I'm going to follow the Pro trend and keep a slimmer boot drive (50% Free) and burn more CDs and DVDs than you can wave a stick at.
Dinner time and then the migration to new HDD! Italian Sausage and garden veggies! 1 of me favs!

-Mike

[DaveyJJ]

My wife's G4 was making clicking noises and she kept telling me to back it up because she thought something was wrong. I didn't. There was. Lost mst of her data (this was years back). Now I back up frequently and listen to my wife more.

[Frigidman]

I actually bought a 500gb external USB drive, and use Time Machine with half of it, and then SuperDuper for the other half (so that I have an instant bootable copy of my drive in case of really bad stuf™).

I run timemachine whenever it wants, I flip the usb drive on at least once a day, and it does its thing, then it shuts off.

For SuperDuper, I run that every other week or so to make a full dupe of my main hard drive. And lately with apples crappy software updates, I do it now BEFORE I allow software update to do something.

As for my pc though, I dont back it up. I will occasionally copy off all saved games of current installed games... but thats the extent. Mainly because my PC has nothing of value on it other than games, saved games, and game configs. Also, my PC drives (sounds like BOTH of them), are doing some weird "click-cha-chick-click" thing every now and thing thats really annoying. However its been doing that now for a couple years... the drives are nearing their 5 year mark, so its time to build a new pc.

[yo-mike]

DaveyJJ, on June 14th 2009, 05:58 PM, said:

My wife's G4 was making clicking noises and she kept telling me to back it up because she thought something was wrong. I didn't. There was. Lost mst of her data (this was years back). Now I back up frequently and listen to my wife more.

If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!

-Mike

[Bernie]

Frigidman, on June 14th 2009, 05:32 PM, said:

tinkle-tinkle

It was peeing?

[yo-mike]

Migrated most of my data. (The important files anyway) Mozilla files, now that's fun stuff dudes!
-Talk about getting geeky. It doesn't get much better than that!


-Mike

[Dark_Archon]

Hard drives are cheap. Keep backups and if you are concerned about a drive, just replace it. The $50-$80 saved isn't worth the headache of unreliable data storage.

[yo-mike]

Thank you, Dark Archon! So true!


-Mike

[Sargiel]

DaveyJJ, on June 14th 2009, 10:58 PM, said:

My wife's G4 was making clicking noises and she kept telling me to back it up because she thought something was wrong. I didn't. There was. Lost mst of her data (this was years back). Now I back up frequently and listen to my wife more.

Oh my goodness! I bet you didn't hear the end of that for quite a while

My HDD is only a couple of years old and running fine - but I'll be getting an external HDD later this year to start Time Machining it so I don't have to worry.

[J'nathus]

Sargiel, on June 21st 2009, 12:28 AM, said:

Oh my goodness! I bet you didn't hear the end of that for quite a while

My HDD is only a couple of years old and running fine - but I'll be getting an external HDD later this year to start Time Machining it so I don't have to worry.

Hard drives have no set expiration date. They can die after only a few minutes of being plugged in, or they can survive for 5 or more years. Like having an extra set of car keys at home, I simply cannot have peace of mind unless I have a backup of my voluminous amount of data (229 GB at last count). Yes quite a bit of it is videos from iTunes... but it's not like they would like to provide me with additional downloads of that content, so I maintain a backup for security sakes. 1 internal backup drive and one external.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

Apple's only-download-once-ever policy is a pretty good motivation if you've spent any money over iTunes. I do all my work on my MBP which is why I've got a portable HD to back it up to, and then back up all my work and media as well to a NAS with two discs in RAID 1 when I'm at home.

[yo-mike]

nobody, on June 21st 2009, 02:30 PM, said:

Apple's only-download-once-ever policy is a pretty good motivation if you've spent any money over iTunes.

There's been reports of Apple's support working with people on re-downloading media they've purchased again because of hard disk crashes and the like. Though I have no worries about this as I have multiple copies of all my iTunes songs and even backups of the songs I decided I didn't want from freebies and the 'drink play win' Pepsi thingy a while back I deleted from my current Library. I use optical media (CDs and DVDs) and hard disks.

Quote

I do all my work on my MBP which is why I've got a portable HD to back it up to, and then back up all my work and media as well to a NAS with two discs in RAID 1 when I'm at home.

I don't put 'all my eggs in one basket'. Hard disk crashes, System freezes, power outages can happen to any 'ol Joe, thus taking your data away to that great bit bucket in the sky. The Data Reaper doesn't have the rights as much for optical media. Though there's other pitfalls to avoid with optical media, like heat, excessive dust, and other damage. Good 'ol Optical media holds it's value like gold and it can last for a decade or more if you take decent care of it. That's why I backup to CDs and DVDs also. SuperDrives are named appropriately and have tremendous value when utilized.

-Mike

This post has been edited by yo-mike: 21 June 2009 - 05:17 PM

[Bernie]

Here is a 2007 article from Ars Technica talking drive failure. The author writes about research done by Google. Also included are some reactions by experts.