Is my hard drive gonna explode?!?!?

[Mr. Dude]

I got a used PC that I'm using in my Cabinet and I noticed this problem shortly after I got it.  When it's booting up and loading Windows the hard drive sounds like a friggn' jet is taking off.  It only does this during boot up though and once it gets to Windows and into my FE it sounds perfectly normal for the rest of the time I use it.  It's been doing this for months now and I've just sort of thought nothing of it.  Do you guys think it's going bad on me or could it be just a noisy drive?  Like I said it's been working for months doing this exact same thing.

[MnMCaputo]

is your harddrive inside or outside of a pc case?  I've noticed harddrive that are not mounted very securely can make a ton of noise

[enchntr]

I would make sure the following is true:

1) Make sure the HDD is installed solidly in the chassis.  It sounds like the spin up routine may be when you notice it more due to the rapid change in RPM.  It could be vibrating against the chassis.

2) Run a good CHKDSK on it to make sure you don't have any bad blocks or sectors (just in case)

3) Look for your HDD Manufacturer's software and see if there is a program for acoustic management...many manufacturers have software which will quiet the drive down, but understand this will slow spindle speed down a bit.  Not much mind you...

[Mr. Dude]

Yep, It's mounted inside a PC case.  I will check to see how secure it is when I get home.  I do run scandisk regularly on it and everything has seemed to check out ok each time.

[Santoro]

Changes in disk noise are always bad.  If the disk was quiet before and loud now, do a backup, and fast.  It'll be dying in the next few months, IMHO.  

[Mr. Dude]

Yeah, I think I will do a current backup just to be safe.  

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Changes in disk noise are always bad.  If the disk was quiet before and loud now, do a backup, and fast.  It'll be dying in the next few months, IMHO.  

I concure. Noisy drive equals gunna' die. If it's clunky noises, then I'd say it's 100% on the way out. If it's high-pitched whining, then it may just be an older, louder drive. I'd say spend the tiny bit of extra cash and replace the drive either way.

[Mr. Dude]

It's more the high pitched whining.  It's like a reving up sound then backing off then reving up then backing off and then it gets quiet after windows loads... ya know now that I think of it, it seems to do it more from a cold start too (like if the machine has been off for a few hours to a day or so) if I turn it off then turn it back on a few minutes later it's not noisy.

[SirPoonga]

How old is the drive?  The 1 gig drive that I had in my set top mp3 box was noisy.  Didn't realize how noisy until I put in the new 10 gig

[Mr. Dude]

It's a 15 gig drive and it's got to at least be 4-5 years old or older.  

[Jakobud]

That is a sign that it is going to die any time now.   Even though it has been doing it for months, it is a sign.  Just make sure you backup anything important off that drive and look into getting a new one in the meantime.

[Tahnok]

Actually, I have I drive that was making that exact same sounds (I remember describing it as a jet taking off a while ago). It still runs fine after about two years. Some drives just do that. If I were you though, I would play it on the safe side and backup everything (always good to have a backup), I wouldn't worry about getting a new drive just yet though.

BTW, I think it was an old Western Digital 13 gig.