Buzzing sound since installing Vista

Hi Jeff H

I'm starting to suspect an ailing hard drive. Thing is, I have four physical drives. What would be a good way to determine which one it is, assuming that's even the problem?

I'm surpised this 1 hasn't been answered yet

A simple process of elimination, remove 2 leaving 2, if the sound is there still, remove another. ( remember to leave your boot drive, most of the time this is C: )

After you get to having only the boot drive left and you still hear the buzzing, you may want to run chkdsk.

Click on Start > Run, type cmd in the Open box and click "Ok".
At the command prompt,
type the following,

• chkdsk /f /r

Then select ' Y ' (for yes, to select to have chkdsk run at the next startup.)

Type 'exit' to close this window.

Log off and Restart Windows,

After Windows Reboots it will run chkdsk, let it run until it completes.

You should notice while chkdsk is running if any notices appear regarding bad sectors, tracks or files etc…

Report your findings back in this thread.


Jkc73

Greetings Jkc73 ah but there is the rub! if Jeff has any of these drive raided in a stripe you run the risk of breaking that raid and never getting it back if you just do the unplug and listen. Would be fine if they are not. A real bee's nest try to glue stripped raids back together. A better solution would be to run the drives manufacturerer tools to determine its health. Many of the drives have a warranty and part of what needs to be done is run their tools. Maxtor for example will product a RMA code on failures you need to get replacements. So determine the maker, go to their website and get the tools. Usually comes in two flavors, a bootable disk or a routine run from within the os. I would prefer to boot the computer with the bootable versions. You get stress tests that chkdsk would not give you. Regards Kaz

Jeff H

Here's an independent tool (not owned by any HD manufactuer) <– and recommended at WTT
Click Here
HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following functions:

• Benchmark: measures the performance
• Info: shows detailed information
• Health: checks the health status by using SMART
• Error Scan: scans the surface for errors
• Temperature display

HD Tune may also work with other storage devices such as memory cards, USB sticks, iPods, etc
Good Luck


Jkc73

Wow, an absolute FLOOD of potentially useful stuff. Some of it may not apply now but it's all worth stickying for future reference, anyway. (E.g. no RAID here, but I've considered it more than once.) I'll try HDTune and some other unrelated stuff from earlier in the thread that I still haven't gotten around to, and I will report back sometime in the next 24 hours. You guys ROCK, you know that?

Moving my case down to the floor (ironically, in an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the mouse problem from my other thread) seems to have put the kibosh on the violin sound. I hope that means it was nothing serious. However, I'm running HD Tune anyway, and it seems my C: drive is running a bit of a fever. Looks like I need an HD cooler. So we did, however inadvertently, uncover a genuine problem.

I'll report back with any further relevant developments, but for now let's assume this one's over with.

Not a good idea to keep a tower on the floor, in most situations. Think of the air intakes as the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. If you have it pressed to the floor (the front lower corner of most towers is the primary intake) then the poor computer is acting like a vacuum cleaner. If it is on a carpet, it scoops up all the more lint, unless even worse it sinks into the carpet and clogs the intake all together. Much better if positioned on a hard desktop with plenty of clear space around it for good air circulation. It "could" be that the case itself was setting up a harmonic, maybe from the PSU vibration, or maybe a fan, or maybe even your HD. Be sure that your HD set screws are firm and/or that the HD case is not free to rattle around. If placing the tower on the floor changed the harmonic, consider placing a couple of magazines or similar under the Tower when placed on your desk or table. What tune was it playing when it was buzzing? —- Vista Rocks" ?? Doug