Should my hard drive(s) be making these noises?

[notttmdude]

One or two of my hard drives are making loud noises.

Not sure how long this has been happening as I have always found my PC to be pretty noisy.

But I have been some what concerned about the noise and as a precaution of backing up my video/music/etc files just in case.

Here is a video. You might need to turn up your speakers to hear it. It does sound more like a clicking sound on the video then in person.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNaRawcMF4U&feature=youtu.be

Not sure if it's just one or both.

They are both 500g

 

[WyomingKnott]

Hard drives should be pretty quiet. There is a slight "clicking" associated with seeking. I can't tell from a recording.

That said, you should ALWAYS have backups. Then, a failed drive is simply a nuisance.

 

[notttmdude]

This video might be a bit better to hear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGrptdR2HH4&feature=youtu.be

 

[notttmdude]

This video might be a bit better to hear too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQc_YmgK_64

With casing all back on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKj5iRWmV0

Best way I can describe it, is that it sounds like the hard drive is always being used. Like when you go searching around your hard drive.

 

[WyomingKnott]

I agree; that sounds like unceasing seek activity. One simple test: Boot the PC into BIOS. If the drives do not make the noise, then something that's running is doing massive disk activities.

Candidates include:
1) Search indexing
2) Antivirus scans
3) Malware

I'm looking for a utility that will show disk activity by process. If you have one, you could see which process is doing so much activity. Do you know of such a utility?

 

[notttmdude]

Went BIOS and it didn't make the noise.

Found this through google. No idea if it will do what you've suggested.

http://download.cnet.com/Process-Explorer/3000-2094_4-10223605.html

 

[WyomingKnott]

Try it and let us know.

 

[notttmdude]

This is what it's showing

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9915/42880569.jpg

 

[WyomingKnott]

I don't see Disk IO rates there. You need something that will show which process is doing all the disk IO, and I don't have a candidate utility.

Anybody else here have an idea? This isn't a private thread, you know.

EDIT : two utilities are mentioned here http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/monitor-xp-disk-activity-t1988416.html

 

[Onus]

The Windows Resource Monitor will show processes performing disk I/O. You can sort it on one of the activity columns (reads or writes).

 

[notttmdude]

This is what shows up on WRM.

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3880/12138623.jpg

 

[WyomingKnott]

OK, I don't understand most of that. Or any of it. Turn off the Search Indexer, just as an experiment. See if that reduces the numbers. The Search Indexer had been one of my original suspects.

Can you sort by Read Bytes / Minute and see if anything is beating up on that more than the Search Indexer is? Or did you already do that and find that the dominant IO is in the Write column?

Maybe someone who understands the NTFS journal better than I do can pitch in here. Why there is so much activity to housekeeping areas is a mystery to me.

 

[notttmdude]

Turning off the Search Indexer seems to have done trick. It's not making a noise now.

Is it ok to not have the SI on?

 

[WyomingKnott]

That depends. Without it on , you have to be sure to use the old-style Search Assistant for your searches. Search Indexer builds a lovely index of all the files on your system, making searches faster. But when it is installed, your default search uses the index database. If that database is stale, it can't find things.

So you have to use the old-style Search Assistant, which is an option offered in the bottom left of the search pane.

Two options. First, remove the search indexer from the system, and the assistant will now be your default search. Second, tweak the options in Search Indexer to make it less aggressive. I don't know how off the top of my head, but I'll take a look.

Anyone else have runaway indexer problems that they solved?

EDIT: Peek through this, which addresses a couple of possible causes: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsdesktopsearchhelp/thread/163713af-59dd-44fe-b13e-dcca7939e8b4

Or Google "search indexer high cpu"

 

[cm0scm0s]

Enable S.M.A.R.T

and download SpeedFan

Make the quicktest and the extensive test ,
please share the results

 

[WyomingKnott]

cm0scm0s

?? we have already established that the disks were being thrashed by indexing ??

What suggests to you that there is an issue with the drive? And the clicky sound from drives, that goes away without Indexer, what could that have to do with SpeedFan?

 

[Esop]

Turning off the Search Indexer seems to have done trick. It's not making a noise now.

Is it ok to not have the SI on?

Also try Disk Action 2 that monitors what's using your hard drive. It's found here:


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1944519,00.asp