Hi. I just got my pc up and running, after a couple of problems. While I was downloading a game trailer for crysis I noticed that my pc was making some wierd noises. It sounded like a kind of bird chirp(not as loud) or a light skreech. I put my head by the case and found them to be comming from the same area as my hard drive and my psu. My psu is a 700w OCZ and my HDD is a 320 gig Seagate. Anyway, as a person who has been around HDDs a long time i could honestly say that i have never heard that sound before. The noise went away after i was finished downloading the trailer but came back when i was installing dark messiah of might and magic. I realized that i only heard the sound sound when my HDD was loading something. I looked around and some people have reported similar sounds before their HDDs failed. I just bought this and installed xp on it and i am afraid that i will loose everything if it fails.

Now to my question. Has anyone ever heard of this, and am i right to be concerned and do i need to replace it?
If i do need to replace it is there some way to copy my HDD to a new one, or do i need to buy a new os(becuase oem can only go on one computer) and re install everything?

I know that this might seem like a stupid question, but i have already had so many problems so far I dont know where else to turn. Thank you for your help.

Without being able to hear your hard drive, I can only give you a general "guesstimate".

I have several seagate hard drives and I have noticed that they make a slightly higher pitch when they are writing data. The high pitch is either not present or not audible when the drive is reading data. I have six seagate drives and they all do this, because of this, I think it is normal. That said, I cannot tell you if the higher pitched sound I hear is the same as what you are calling a "bird chirp".

I suggest you download ActiveSMART (look it up in google). It monitors the hard drive and will _generally_ let you know if a hard drive is having problems before it fails completely.

Lastly, whatever the case ends up being, you should still back up what you really care about. More so when you suspect the drive may have a problem.

HTH

The little bird that writes your data is getting pissed. (think Flintstones )

Some drives are louder than others, make sure you have your data backed up just in case.

Every few days preform a chkdsk on the drive, if you start to get bad sectors, run the dos version of seatools and get an RMA started.

Thanks, but what would you recomend to backup data? I 've heard of tape drives but they are kind of expensive. I was wondering if i could just use an external HDD to back it up.

Thanks for your help. this is my first build and its not going so well.

I've noticed that since i went 2 SATA i've had HDD noise. i have an 80gb Matrox HDD and a 320 Seagate. As far as i can tell there is nothing wrong with them, i think its just the reading and writing of the HDD that makes the noise, thats my experience.

Feed it some canary feed..... Its hungry. Then get a copy of seatools from seagate's website, run that, and do whatever it tells you. You don't have to worry about re-installing winxp just because of a drive failure, but you might have to spend an inordinate amount of time talking to a nice person with an unfamiliar accent.

Backups are good things. I like acronis.

/edit/ I have four of the 320 seagates, none of them chirp. No difference in noise reading or writing. /endedit/

i still want to back up my stuff, even if my drive is good, but can i just use an external HDD or do i need a tape drive??

You do not need a tape drive to backup your system. You can use a hard drive (internal or external). If you use a package like Acronis True Image you will be able to make backups of your data and images of your drive in case you need to replace your drive.

thanks i will probqally use an external HDD to back up just to be safe..

thanks

I have 2 seagate drives and they do the same thing! I dont think there is anything wrong with them...

oh I have an OCZ 700 watt and my drives do a single chirp every once in a while, not often...

Just be thankful you didn't buy a Hitachi Deathstar.

I have a seagate drive and when i turn on my computer the drive emits a very audible chirping sound. My problem is that this drive isn't being detected. I have an identical drive that work no problem, and i had planned to setup a raid 0 array with these drive. Please help .