Odd External Hard Drive Sounds

[Xmsteel]

Hi everyone.

I got a load of Apple stuff ranging from 1985-1996 yesterday and included was an external LaCie hard drive.

I plugged her in and noticed a really, really odd sound. I've never heard of HDD make a sound like this before, and couldn't find a similar sound on all of the "hard drive failure sounds" websites.

The hard drive itself is an IBM DORS-32160 from 1996. Below is a link to a youtube video with the hard drive producing the odd sound. I believe it repeats 3 times before I stop recording.

youtube.com/watch?v=Plbo5SJl5Go

You will need to turn your speakers up.

I assume its means the HDD is toast, but does anyone have any idea what this means? Like, what the problem is or if you have heard it before?

Thanks a bunch.

 

[i7Baby]

They should be dead quiet. It means the head and/or platter motor is struggling and its about to come to a stop.

 

[Amencerment]

Once the drive starts making noise, you need to look at mitigating the data. There are many moving parts in the drive, and lets just say if it's the "Head", well get your stuff off ASAP.

This happens with older drives, and it might be time to upgrade. Everything has a shelf-life.

 

[Xmsteel]

Once the drive starts making noise, you need to look at mitigating the data. There are many moving parts in the drive, and lets just say if it's the "Head", well get your stuff off ASAP.

This happens with older drives, and it might be time to upgrade. Everything has a shelf-life.

Luckily this was a storage unit pick and has nothing of value on it (that I'm aware of anyway).


UPDATE: HAHAHAHA WELL. I unscrewed the top, and took the top off. Plugged it in so I could see what was happening and gave it a go. Guess what. Spins up and sounds perfect. Too bad its ruined because I took the top off.

Talk about weird.

UPDATE 2: Found out the issue. The actuator arm just flops around freely and doesn't do anything. I assume the screw that went into the arm was why it made noise.