It’s one of the worst sounds in the world – a hard drive mechanism that’s gone bad. It’s even worse when it’s the sound of YOUR hard drive that decided to up and die. Unfortunately, one of my hard drives recently decided to bite the dust, but I thought I’d use the untimely demise of my hardware to provide you with some insight on what you (or your clients) might expect to hear when a hard drive starts going south.
During the troubleshooting process, I’ll sometimes ask if the problematic hard drive is making a “clicking” noise. If you aren’t exactly sure what the clicking noise of a bad hard drive sounds like, this audio clip is for you.
I took apart my hard drive enclosure, put a microphone into the unit, and powered it up. The sound you hear will be of the hard drive spinning up, the hard drive mechanics “clicking,” and the hard drive spinning down. It retries the process before powering down for good.
For those interested in the details, this was an external USB 2.0 Western Digital 500GB MyBook. After dismantling the enclosure, I found a 3.5” Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS drive. This was a SATA drive that was powered through an external power source and connected to my system through a USB 2.0 port. It was manufactured on August 6, 2006.
All of my family photos for the last five years were stored on this hard drive. Fortunately, I had a backup – do you?
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Now I'm in the market for a new 1TB external hard drive. I'd love to find a Gigabit Ethernet connected drive, but I'll make due with a USB 2.0 version.
Re:The sound of a hard drive gone bad Apr 26 2008 03:53:28
CompUSA has a pretty good selection.
Mostly USB. Some of the brands I was unfamiliar with but they did have Western Digital and Seagate if I remember right. Not sure what your preferences are.
Better yet, take a look through Tom's Hardware. They've got a better selection with a filter feature that'll let you refine your search a little better.
Re:The sound of a hard drive gone bad Apr 27 2008 00:15:24
Hello, this is my first post here. Funny you should mention a bad hard drive. This just happened to me last week. First time that I have ever had it happen. Mine was an internal HD, that thing would drive me crazy, haha. I got a new one from newegg.com promtly and popped it in. Seems to be working fine.
I would also like to add that I think you are doing a great job here. I just recently decided to start on the path to becoming A+ certified and I think that you have a very well thought out, comprehensive, and practical process. Thanks for taking your time to share your knowledge with us. I look forward to your next module update.
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