Every now and then I can hear a faint high pitched whine or squeel from my Samsung SP4002H hard drive, which lasts about one second. This only happens when the HDD is basically "NOT" doing anything like searching or defragging etc. Is this slight noise OK, or is it the first sign of failure. if so, what are the next signs, longer squeels, louder etc ??? The computer is only about 3 weeks old, and I was wondering if I should be concerned, or if this faint whine is normal to some types of hard drives. Thanks for your opinions.

It could mena the drive was on its way out, but then again i have had drives make od noises and clicks and stuff, and lasted for years..now that i have been using harware for quite some years now, im starting to think thatHds just get louder over time....could be my imagination though

=Drew

... im starting to think thatHds just get louder over time....could be my imagination though

Im starting to think that too. The real question is what to do about it.

if its not doing anything and it isn the main drive it might just be shutting down and all your hearing is the heads parking (is that what u call them lol)

check your power settings in windows control panel and see if you have it set to turn off harddisks after a certain amount of time.

thats what it could be or your hardrive might just be dieing

Since the computer is 3 weeks old then you should call your tech support and report it.This way even if they say it is normal then you have recourse if the drive fails,but do push them for a remedy.It's under warranty and most hard drives come with 3yrs.warranty anyway.I would have to hear the noise for myself to determine if it is not running right,but I have had a new drive sent to me and it squealed and ground to a halt.

It's under warranty and most hard drives come with 3yrs.warranty anyway.

most hard drives dont have the 3 year anymore. Maxtor dropped it, if you can RMA a fujitsu its a miricle lol

Some 10,000 RPM HDs make a wining sound when they are spinning-up and after a time make a similar sound when spinnig-down. Ït is a high pitch sound like "Vrrrr...". Is that the sound? If so then dont worry about it because it is supposed to sound like that. Now, 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM drives seldom ever make that sound unless they are crunching data to the max like a server. Since it is in idle mode I would discount the later, however there are probally background processes running which cause a HD to spin-up. Are you serving on the internet or across a LAN?

You can test the hard drive for fault by running testing software that is available free from this site http://www.passmark.com/

Some drives make that sound when the mice running on the belt bump into each other

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and suggestions. MSNwar--I downloaded that www.passmark.com program and it reported "NO ERRORS"

I guess I will keep an eye, or ear on it to see if it gets louder in the next few weeks. I do plan to backup everything, just in case. Have a Happy Holiday everyone. Mike

MSNwar, I painted white lines on the belt and instructed the mice to stay in their own lanes or I was going to feed them to the imaginary cat that I do not have !!!

i hope you didnt actually tell them that you dont have the imaginary cat, mice are smarter than you think.

maybe you should threaten to get an imaginary cat.

If the jumpers are not set properly, could this cause the squeel once in a while. The computer was originally telling me that the HDD was only a 34 gig and it was supposed to be a 40 gig. I tried all the diagrams from the Samsung site with no luck. The company I bought the computer from told me to jumper it a different way that did not match any of the diagrams from the Samsung website. It turned out that I did not properly partition the HDD. and there was another 6 gig of unpartitioned space. The computer now displays the full 40 gig etc, but I still have it jumpered like that guy told me.

I am pretty sure the jumpering has nothing to do with the squeel, but I thought I would ask anyway. Thanks again !!