Question MSI GL62M 7RDX - HGST HDD Squeaking/Chirping Noise

IVorzaYT

Prominent
Jan 24, 2022
13
0
510
Hello there,

Just like the title suggests, I have a 5 year old MSI GL62M 7RDX that features a Toshiba Sata SSD and an Hitachi HGST 1TB 5400rpm 1TB HDD.

This PC is rarely used. And when I say rarely, I really mean it. I bought it for a school project but ended up scraping that same project and this PC has remained most of its life stored. I occasionally turn it on and use it between months but I've never even done any heavy gaming nor anything major in this so it has no significant wear whatsoever.

Altough to my surprise I've noticed that the HDD has been making this weird squeaky/chirping noise occasionally and I even thought it was my imagination but apparently it's not. The noise happens during heavy workload instances and can be easily replicated via CrystalDiskMark when doing the 4K Writing test.

The disk is a HGST HTS541010B7E610

Specs are as follows:

  • GTX 1050 4GB Mobile
  • i7 7700hq
  • 8GB DDR4 2400Mhz
I've recorded a video:
View: https://youtu.be/em73aPNhKZY

(From timestamp 1:23)

Is the disk dying? Is it "normal"?

Thanks in advance!
 
Last edited:

IVorzaYT

Prominent
Jan 24, 2022
13
0
510
The noise happens during heavy workload instances
Might be a good idea to replace the drive with something brand new or a new 2.5"SSD.

Damn that's bad. I'm not going to waste any money on this laptop tho. As I have a much more powerful desktop and I don't use the laptop enough for that to be a "solution".

But what might have caused the hard drive to go bad like this? I've always treated this PC with extreme care. I never dropped it, it never overheated. How can a HDD fail this easily? I barely even played any games in this.

Maybe the motor's lube dried out due to lack of usage? I'm just confused. I've been around Hard Drives for years and never have I ever had a drive sounding like this.
 

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
What do you see in terms of life/condition of the drive with CrystalDisk? If you don't see any issues with using the HDD on a daily basis, leave it be. To me, I wouldn't trust a noisy HDD with any personal/mission critical data. FYI, there's nothing worth servicing in that drive. If it's noisy, you leave it as is, and if possible you replace the drive with a 2.5" SSD/HDD.

I've had a lot of drives fail on me over my time around HDD's since 1998. You hear something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you move all important data off of it.
 

IVorzaYT

Prominent
Jan 24, 2022
13
0
510
According to CrystalDiskInfo everything’s perfectly fine. I’m “ok” with the noise. It can get a bit annoying when everything’s quiet but I can live with it. I have no data on it whatsoever apart from a few game launchers such as Steam and Epic, so even if it does fail it’s not a big deal, I guess. It’s just that I thought that the disk was fine and I find this a bit unexpected based on usage, care and even supposed reliability of Hitachi drives. And I wasn’t keen on opening the laptop given that temps are perfectly fine still and the fact that I tend to avoid tearing apart electronics, apart from Desktops. But if the HDD does die eventually (which is extremely likely, given the circumstances) I’ll follow your advice and install a new 2.5” SSD (done with HDDs) and even a Gen 3 970 Evo (that I have stored) alongside and I’ll probably also upgrade the ram to 16Gb as well.

Anyhow, thanks for the heads up. You can leave the post open for a while longer, in case someone with the exact same drive appears and confirms this is actually not supposed to sound like this (a bit on denial, I know). If you don’t mind, of course.

Thanks!