Hard Drive Failing?

[Alexk492]

First off, this computer is really old. It is a family hp desktop pc. Pretty frequently, I hear this annoying sound. It kinda sounds like the night, when nothing else is making sounds, and you hear a slight noise in the background. Kinda like a disk moving. It's hard to describe it.

But when i go next to the PC, I don't hear it anymore. It might be overridden with other noises? There is 2 PC's pretty close to each other, one is new, one is old. Which one is it? How do I test them?

 

[lucas_7_94]

Do you make a complete clean to the PC?

 

[smorizio]

old pc can be bad fan or dust. on the old pc run hdtune take a screen shot of the smart info and post it here. if there are a lot of warnings..time to replace the drive before it fails.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Alexk492,

The first thing you need to do is to back up all the data stored on the drive as soon as possible, as it may be failing. You need to back up the data that you can't afford to loose anyway.
After that, you can test the drive in question(or all of them) with a tool that can provide SMART report as smorizio advised: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

LEt us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD