[larry53]

Is there anything that can be done to reduce the noise of a hard drive. The one on my desktop makes so much noise I can not hear much from the computer if I am listening to a movie or what ever I am doing at the time. Sometimes the hard drive takes off and it sound like it may fly out of the case.

[Al_The_Man]

I would suggest making a Cloned back up ASAP!.
Al.

[ger21]

Are you sure it's not the CD or DVD drive?

[larry53]

No, it is the hard drive. It is a HP computer however the hard drive was replaced about two years ago. The ram is 4 gigs and the hard drive is 200 gig. Everything seems ok except when I am viewing something and it will take off. It is not making any noise as I am typing this message but there are times it really takes off.

[ImanCarrot]

Yep, I'd clone that hard drive as soon as possible- it might be on its way out if its making that much noise.

Do a defrag on it in case you've got fragmented files and it's trying to access them at different parts of the disk.

But I'd back it up straight away. I had an HD fail on the SMART scan and did nothing hoping that it'd get better- just got worse and lost a stack of programs and files.

It p*ssed me off that much I took a pair of tin snips to it.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

larry55, I had the same problem with (2) hard drives on my HP. First one replaced under warranty, second was replaced at my expense. Replaced them with a 500gb Seagate and added 500gb Seagate back-up.

I haven't had a problem in 2 years since. Also replaced Vista w/ XP-PRO sp3.

Dick Z

[CNC602]

Just wondering how is that hard drive.. Mine is starting to do that as well..

[larry53]

My hard drive is still running like crazy some times, but so far no problem with it.

[Zoner]

Time to change it Larry. Buy yourself a Christmas present and copy your data onto it and use it as your primary disk. Keep the old one as a backup. Trust me!

[BiggerHammer]

As others have said, noise from a hard drive is bad- particularly if the noise is getting louder/shriller. Back up soon and plan to replace the drives.

If you just have noisy hard drives in an otherwise quiet computer, there are a number of noise-control options such as suspending the drive in nylon/rubber or soundproofing the case.

[larry53]

The hard drive just runs real fast and the noise is coming from it spinning so fast. If I am watching a video or something like that, the sound is so loud that its hard to hear the video.

[wildwestpat]

Hi Folks

If you are looking to replace a hard disk for a media type application it is worth taking time to pick that repalacement. Some disks are designed for speed and these are going to be noisy and others are designed to be a quiet as possible. The Samsung SpinPoints are amongst the quietest currently available (Spinpoint HD154UI ECO Green F2 1.5TB SATA 3Gb/s listed at under £85). But the price of solid state hard disk replacements is falling very rapidly and it will not be long befor they are attractive on price to more than HiFi buffs.

Regards

Pat

[larry53]

I think mine is the kind for speed, it sure is load and runs like it is going to fly out of the computer. Thanks for the response.

[wildwestpat]

Hi Larry53

Just a thought if the drive is relatively new i.e. more than half its warrenty period left there are rubber bushes available from PC shops to reduce the vibrations. There are also enclosures that envelope the drive in sound proofing material but I would not recommend these unless you verify that the drive is not going to cook. Some of the 'performance' drives have software that can be used to reduce the nasty tick tick noise as the head jumps about the sectors but this does nothing to reduce the bearing noise which is a problem with fast drives in a quiet environment.

If you are in the market for a new drive the warrenty period is a god guide to the inherent quality of the drive. All drives are not equal speed for speed capacity for capacity.

Good luck

Pat