slow boot up and loud grinding sound

[Brettapus]

hi as of 2 days ago my pc has been very slow while booting up. its gone from about 15-25second boot up time to about 45-70 seconds and during that time something is making an awful grinding sound. i think its my HDD but the thing i dont understand about that is my OS is on my SSD so why would the HDD messing up be reducing the bootup time . i also read that it could be a fan making the down but once again if a fan was making that sound why would it reduce my boot up time from 20seconds to 70.

if you have any fixes for this please help me thank you ever so much

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Brettapus.

It really sounds more like an HDD issues rather than a fan problem. So I'd strongly recommend that you don't waste any time and start backing up your most important data if you haven't done so already, just as a cautionary measure.
After that go ahead and download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test it for errors and bad sectors, to see what's the situation with the drive.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Brettapus]

ive got the money to just go buy a new one tbh so if you're certain its my HDD ill just got the shop now buy a new one and clone this one thats probably the easiest fix for it right??

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I can't be 100% sure, but it really sounds like it. Grinding noises usually indicate physical damage, which could mean that the more you use the drive, the greater is the chance of making things worse. So I'd recommend against cloning the whole drive right away and just start with the most valuable data, like photos, videos, documents, projects, etc.

However, if you have nothing to backup, then you can go ahead and try cloning the drive.

 

[Brettapus]

yeah i dont have anything important on there its mainly just a lot of big files that i dont wanna have to download again

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Great! If it's downloadable content, at least you won't be losing anything of huge importance if things go south. Before you go and grab a new drive, I'd advise you to contact the vendor you got the drive from or the manufacturer, just to check if it's still under warranty and if you can get it replaced. However in order to do that you'd probably have to check at least it's SMART status via an HDD diagnostic tool, just to make sure that there's indeed a fault with the drive.

 

[Brettapus]

oh its definitely not in its warranty ive had this as my second drive now for about 4 nearly 5 years lol and i have an SSD as my primary drive

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I see, good luck with the cloning process then! Let me know how it goes.

 

[Brettapus]

will do

 

[Brettapus]

its working wonderfully now thanks for the help c: had to change all my desktop icons again lol and the transfer took a while but its sorted now

 

[Brettapus]

oh my god lol im so stupid, so i started my pc up this morning and guess what long start up time and intense grinding so i quickly pull the side panel of my case off jumped down to my PC's height and had my head in there listening to where the sound was coming from, but this time listening with the highest amount of concentration. turns out the sound wasnt the HDD it was coming from the disk tray opened it up and out come a ruined cod game lol. it was trying to read the disk but it couldnt because somehow its got scratch to hell in there. oh well guess i have an extra 1tb storage now haha

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Don't worry it could happen to anyone. At least your HDD is not the problem and you don't have to get a new one.

Cheers!