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From: cisz on 12 Jan 2010 04:21
We've got a 60G western digital hard drive. It's been making noises like
it's suddenly going faster, and then slows down.

Is this a sign of a problem developing?

The computer is plugged into a surge protector.



From: The Truth on 12 Jan 2010 05:38
On 12/01/2010 09:21, cisz wrote:
> We've got a 60G western digital hard drive. It's been making noises like
> it's suddenly going faster, and then slows down.
>
> Is this a sign of a problem developing?
>
> The computer is plugged into a surge protector.

This is perfectly normal. I would not even bother backing up any
important data.















BTW I was being sarcastic

From: Don Phillipson on 12 Jan 2010 15:04
"cisz" <cisz.x(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hiheuh015fe(a)news5.newsguy.com...

> We've got a 60G western digital hard drive. It's been making noises like
> it's suddenly going faster, and then slows down.
>
> Is this a sign of a problem developing?
>
> The computer is plugged into a surge protector.

Download the WD Diagnostics and run them.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)


From: Paul on 12 Jan 2010 18:11
cisz wrote:
> We've got a 60G western digital hard drive. It's been making noises like
> it's suddenly going faster, and then slows down.
>
> Is this a sign of a problem developing?
>
> The computer is plugged into a surge protector.
>

Actually, it can be a couple different issues.

1) The hard drive is dying.

2) The quality of power feeding the hard drive is slipping.

The first thing to do, is run any Western Digital hard drive diagnostic
you can find on their web site. If the drive passes all the tests,
then it could be there is a problem with the power supply.

On a couple of my older power supplies, the first warning I got,
was the fans on the computer, that normally run at a constant
speed, started to vary in speed. The human ear is pretty sensitive
to the tone of the fan, so you can hear relatively minor changes
in fan speed (and the voltage feeding the fan is proportional to
the speed). I could tell from the noise the fan was making, that
my +12V was no longer stable.

In some cases, the problem can be related to the way the cabling
is set up. For example, some AGP video cards, have a Molex 1x4
connector, the same type as is used on a disk drive. Sometimes, a
cable will be run from the power supply, with two connectors on it.
It is not a good idea, if one connector goes to the video card and
the other goes to a hard drive. The video card should use its own
cable with Molex on the end. It is OK to run a couple or three hard
drives, off a common cable. I had a problem recently on my current
computer, where a SATA drive started spinning down and up again,
and the cause was a shared power cable (video card and SATA drive
used the same cable). When I used separate power cables for the two
loads, the drive stopped spinning down on its own.

At the very least, make sure your data is backed up on another drive.
You can get external hard drives with USB interfaces, which can be
used for the job. That will lessen the impact to you, if the hard
drive fails completely.

Paul
From: cisz on 14 Jan 2010 03:15

"Paul" <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote in message
news:hiivjg$ot2$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> cisz wrote:
>> We've got a 60G western digital hard drive. It's been making noises like
>> it's suddenly going faster, and then slows down.
>>
>> Is this a sign of a problem developing?
>>
>> The computer is plugged into a surge protector.
>>
>
> Actually, it can be a couple different issues.
>
> 1) The hard drive is dying.
>
> 2) The quality of power feeding the hard drive is slipping.
>
> The first thing to do, is run any Western Digital hard drive diagnostic
> you can find on their web site. If the drive passes all the tests,
> then it could be there is a problem with the power supply.
>
> On a couple of my older power supplies, the first warning I got,
> was the fans on the computer, that normally run at a constant
> speed, started to vary in speed. The human ear is pretty sensitive
> to the tone of the fan, so you can hear relatively minor changes
> in fan speed (and the voltage feeding the fan is proportional to
> the speed). I could tell from the noise the fan was making, that
> my +12V was no longer stable.
>
> In some cases, the problem can be related to the way the cabling
> is set up. For example, some AGP video cards, have a Molex 1x4
> connector, the same type as is used on a disk drive. Sometimes, a
> cable will be run from the power supply, with two connectors on it.
> It is not a good idea, if one connector goes to the video card and
> the other goes to a hard drive. The video card should use its own
> cable with Molex on the end. It is OK to run a couple or three hard
> drives, off a common cable. I had a problem recently on my current
> computer, where a SATA drive started spinning down and up again,
> and the cause was a shared power cable (video card and SATA drive
> used the same cable). When I used separate power cables for the two
> loads, the drive stopped spinning down on its own.
>
> At the very least, make sure your data is backed up on another drive.
> You can get external hard drives with USB interfaces, which can be
> used for the job. That will lessen the impact to you, if the hard
> drive fails completely.
>
> Paul

Thanks.

I was thinking the sound was coming from the hard drive but after your post
I listened more closely and it seems to be the cpu fan.

I guess the power supply might be going or the power company voltage is
varying.

I wonder if there's an easy way to check the line voltage without having to
wait and watch a volt meter.


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