Hard drive makes weird sound when booting
 

I have a 2-3 year old Maxtor 250GB hard drive in an enclosure. A few days ago I noticed it was making this weird sound when I started up the enclosure. Kind of like a weird gulping, hiccupping or coughing sound. Didn't seem right.

I thought maybe the enclosure was going bad somehow; it had already lost one of its LEDs mysteriously. I put the drive in another enclosure and got the same sound out of it.

To say this drive has been faultless would be untrue. I've had to format it once because it would work inside my computer but not in an enclosure. I also lost all my data on it. I don't know what happened, the data just went bad, but after I formatted it, it seemed fine.

Now I already copied everything from it to another drive, because damned if I lose 700 #gamemp3s releases.

Is the drive going bad? Should I just ignore the sound? Is there any software I could use to verify that my drive is working correctly, or will it not be able to detect the nature of the malfunction before it's too late?

It seems like your hard drive will be busted soon, I might be wrong though, but a friend of mine had the same problem as your hard drive, and in few weeks or something, his hard drive went bad, and he had to buy a new one...

Three years is relatively new to be crapping out on you, but the noise doesn't sound promising. In my experience, any new noise from a drive is a Bad Thing. It sounds like maybe it's struggling to spin up to speed.

It's a Maxtor, so I am not surprised it is crapping out after 2-3 years.

The only way that I am familiar with to test the fitness of your hard drive is to use a program that implements "S.M.A.R.T. Technology," which is a built-in system that checks the integrity of the hard drive. Its scope is rather limited, but it might pick something up in this case. Also, not all hard drives have that system installed, but that feature is becoming more and more of a standard addition.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22

Run that.

Really? Wow, I'm glad my drives aren't Maxtor. They are something over 2 years old now.

Don't start this discussion, please - it'll have no end, and we'll hear Maxtor, Seagate and WD in a random order time after time.

And IBM, but that's from the kid who doesn't know what he's saying, so don't listen to him. He lies.

Grawl: Yes, of course. You're quite right, and I should have realised it. Edit your post, and we'll have saved everyone the headache. >_<

Yeah I was told Maxtors either last very short or very long, but they certainly are the cheapest. Of course Maxtor now belongs to Seagate. Also, while avoiding the argument of which drives are the best, I would like to mention that Seagate drives come with a five year warranty.

Yeah I'm figuring this thing is going to give up the ghost soon. I'd rather it just die than have to wonder whether or not I can store files on it and for how long.

Try an RMA. I've got RMAs on hard drives that I had abused in inhuman ways. I mean drives that I fucked up by being a moron, and they still gave me an RMA. Several manufacturers offer five years now, and I exploit that shamelessly.

Maxtor comes with a five year warranty too nowadays.

Most likely because Seagate bought Maxtor. The drive I currently have does not have such a warranty, however, unless it was somehow magically extended by the niceness of Seagate :(

Not trying to incite any best HD argument, but speaking from personal experience, one of my maxtors crapped out within 2 years of having it (and they only had an 18 month warranty or some BS). My seagate is still going strong, and it has plenty of time left on the 5 year warranty.

Backup your files on CD or DVD just in case. The worst part about a HD going is not losing the drive, but losing the data. You can always buy a new drive.

I backed up the data to an alternate drive.

Backing up 150GB worth of stuff takes time, and there are other things to consider like CRC Errors. Plus my DVD writer is ultra old and can burn only up to 4X, so it would take days :(