[Sking0]

Hi. For a few months now my pc makes a loud whirring noise on startup, it is hard to give a better description of the noise.
Once the desktop has loaded the noise stops. It doesn't happen every time i boot up just randomly, but lately it has become
more frequent. I have a Corsair psu which is only about 1 year old (if that). I am 90% sure it is the hard drive. My graphics
card is the same age as my psu, bought them at the same time.
The hard drive is about 5 years old. It has been through a lot of system restores and i have certainly put it though its paces.
If it was a fan on another piece of hardware i think the noise would be quite different. It is kind of a metallic tinny whirring.
Anyway, apart from confirmation about the source of the noise, i am looking for tips on the best quality hard drives to buy.
I have searched the net about the noise but never read anything conclusive. The pc runs fine and i don't have any problems with it,
it is purely the hard drive i am concerned about, don't want it to completely fail and lose all my stuff.

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It sounds to me like the drive, for want of a better word Sking, is asleep and only starts to get its self ready for action when you boot up and you may also find that if you are not constantly accessing the drive, when you do and are running Windows 7, it shows a kind of green loading bar in the address section because it is readying its self for access.

It's when you hear grinding or clicking noises it's time to start worrying mate.

You could of course run a disk check on it via a command prompt.

[Wolfeymole]

It sounds to me like the drive, for want of a better word Sking, is asleep and only starts to get its self ready for action when you boot up and you may also find that if you are not constantly accessing the drive, when you do and are running Windows 7, it shows a kind of green loading bar in the address section because it is readying its self for access.

It's when you hear grinding or clicking noises it's time to start worrying mate.

You could of course run a disk check on it via a command prompt.

[Sking0]

Will do that and get back to you. Thanks very much.

[Wolfeymole]

You're welcome mate and please do let us know.

[Sking0]

I ran it and it found nothing wrong. When the pc booted after that there was no noise. Will see what happens on next boot.

[Sking0]

Just booted up and no noise...It was getting to the stage where it did it every boot so happy atm. Thanks for the advice

[Wolfeymole]

That sounds, no pun intended, good to me Sking but what do you have for such things as a backup, do you have an external drive or drives in case the system does go pear shaped at some point?

[Sking0]

Well, i do have an external hard drive but i will be getting a new hard drive because it did it again today .
Slightly different sound more of an up and down whirring, i reckon it is a warning that i should heed.
Do you have any recommendations for a Hard drive manufacturer?

[Wolfeymole]

Do an immediate backup via Backup and Restore in Control Panel of your system to the external drive just in case it dies in the mean time.

Consider this Hitachi 3.5" sata 1TB drive Sking.

http://www.ebuyer.co...CFVDMtAod3R8A1w

[Sking0]

Hi. I very rarely use more than 200 gigs of my hard drive, i constantly get rid of stuff that is old/unused.
If Hitachi is a trusted manufacturer i will See about getting a slightly smaller one. But thanks.
BTW, i was gonna open the case and see if a/some screws have worked loose (optimist).

[Wolfeymole]

I've got a 1TB Hitachi drive which I've had for some time and has proved excellent.

I would get a new hard drive though now as your original one is getting slightly long in the tooth.

It's very rare that self tapping screws become loose from the steel chassis that holds drives by the way.

[Sking0]

I got a Hitachi coming tomorrow. Thanks for the help.

[Wolfeymole]

Any time Sking and let us know if you run into any issues.

[Sking0]

Got the hard drive and i have been reading about formatting it etc. From what i have read it seems that i need to install, partition and format it with a windows 7 program. So i assume i need to install it with the old one still in the machine otherwise there would be no program to use to set it up? I know this may sound obvious but i have never installed a new hard drive. So basically i put the new drive in, do the partition/format and then copy the stuff over and remove old hard drive?

[Sking0]

(On wifes lappy atm)Started backing up to external hard drive. When it's done i am just gonna take out the old drive, put the new one in and windows will automatically format/partition? then i'll just copy it all over from external hard drive.