[SOLVED] HDD occasionally makes weird grinding noises and whatever programs are being used in the HDD freeze for a very short amount of time

[saffron3d]

Exactly what it says in the title. My 2TB HDD seems to randomly make these weird grinding noises at very random time intervals: sometimes it makes the noises every 10 minutes while sometimes it only happens every 1 hour or more. Programs that are currently being used in the HDD will also freeze for around 3 to 5 seconds during the grinding noises and then normally resume with no problems.

Another thing that I want to add is that, strangely enough, the HDD seems to stop making these grinding noises altogether when I'm playing relatively recent video games. The most recent example I have of this is playing Middle-earth: Shadow of War (a game from 2017) and having absolutely no grinding noises and no freezes whatsoever.

I also ran both CrystalDiskInfo and Hard Disk Sentinel to check the HDD's health and both said that it's in good shape.

 

[USAFRet]

Grinding and simultaneous freezing?
That's a dying drive.

Is it still under warranty?
You have a good backup routine, right?

 

[popatim]

I think normal reading/writing noises could be mistaken for grinding on some of the louder drives.

Can you try and get a good recording of it and post a link to it here? you need to host it on a sharing site though.

Also, run CrystalDiskInfo and post a link to a screenshot of too please.

 

[mdd1963]

What some interpret as 'grinding' noises could very well be normal drive access sounds...

Many things stored on drives will take a but of time to access, and, games could very well hitch for a second or two while new data is accessed...

CrystalDiskInfo will 99% of the time tell you if a drive is having issues or not...

WIth a 1 TB MX500 at about $95-$100 these days, and INtel's 660P at similar levels..why bother with spinning drives until above 2 TB capacities...

 

[Mr.Spock]

Is the HDD your primary drive? you may be doing something memory intensive and it's allocating pagefile.
My want to preallocate that as a contiguous file to reduce this.

Exactly what it says in the title. My 2TB HDD seems to randomly make these weird grinding noises at very random time intervals: sometimes it makes the noises every 10 minutes while sometimes it only happens every 1 hour or more. Programs that are currently being used in the HDD will also freeze for around 3 to 5 seconds during the grinding noises and then normally resume with no problems.

Another thing that I want to add is that, strangely enough, the HDD seems to stop making these grinding noises altogether when I'm playing relatively recent video games. The most recent example I have of this is playing Middle-earth: Shadow of War (a game from 2017) and having absolutely no grinding noises and no freezes whatsoever.

I also ran both CrystalDiskInfo and Hard Disk Sentinel to check the HDD's health and both said that it's in good shape.

 

[saffron3d]

Grinding and simultaneous freezing?
That's a dying drive.

Is it still under warranty?
You have a good backup routine, right?

I have a lot of data that I want to backup. Around 410 GB to be more precise. I think I'm going to get a 1TB external drive to make backups.

 

[USAFRet]

I have a lot of data that I want to backup. Around 410 GB to be more precise. I think I'm going to get a 1TB external drive to make backups.

You need to be making backups all the time. Not just when you suspect a drive issue.

Your drive might be making normal noises, or it migh be dying.

 

[saffron3d]

I think normal reading/writing noises could be mistaken for grinding on some of the louder drives.

Can you try and get a good recording of it and post a link to it here? you need to host it on a sharing site though.

Also, run CrystalDiskInfo and post a link to a screenshot of too please.

Here's a screenshot of CrystalDiskInfo:

I don't know if I can record it though. I'll see what I can do.

 

[saffron3d]

Is the HDD your primary drive? you may be doing something memory intensive and it's allocating pagefile.
My want to preallocate that as a contiguous file to reduce this.

No. My primary drive (the one that runs Windows 10) is an SSD drive. I mostly use the HDD drive to store files and to play video games.

 

[Mr.Spock]

might just need to defrag the HDD, it's probably doing a good number of random seeks to load everything.
Might want to consider imaging the whole thing to a Firecuda SSHD (instant backup) - the caching for games improves over time.
And can be had for ~$60.

Your drive stats look fine except for high fly write count (also not alarming)

No. My primary drive (the one that runs Windows 10) is an SSD drive. I mostly use the HDD drive to store files and to play video games.

 

[saffron3d]

might just need to defrag the HDD, it's probably doing a good number of random seeks to load everything.
Might want to consider imaging the whole thing to a Firecuda SSHD (instant backup) - the caching for games improves over time.
And can be had for ~$60.

Your drive stats look fine except for high fly write count (also not alarming)

According to the defragging tool, my HDD is "0% fragmented" so I don't think defragging will be necessary.

 

[popatim]

With 10,000 hours on it, it's not new so I assume the noise is and you should make sure important stuff is backed up (as is always the case) and begin looking to replace this one.

 

[DSzymborski]

Do NOT defrag your hard drive or do anything else whatsoever with this drive except trying to backup what you can. As it appears you haven't been backing up your files, that's now your first priority because there's a high chance you could lose your data at any time. Until your files are properly backed up, you have to assume that your drive is dying and that this is a salvage operation.