Hey all,

I went and put a new system together and its running great
but the hard drive which started out quite has slowly gotten
louder over time.

Its a 7200 RPM, 300GB Sata, and I think its a Seagate but not
sure. Any ideas?

noisy, as in fan noise? Or this could be due to heat? feel the hardrive when running is the heat tolerable? Also when you get this noise is it when it first runs? Or after the computer runs for a while? Got a warrenty? Id start looking for it if you do

Some drives just make noise.. but usually they do right out of the package. Depending on what you are hearing.. it can be no issue at all or an indicator the drive is seriously malfunctioning.

You might just be hearing it swap... In other words.. your computer is using it as memory more then it used to... That is an intermittent sound. Kind of like a mechanical moving and whirring for a few seconds.. to a minute or so.. then stopping.

Take kalamazoo's advice and determine beyond doubt that the hard drive is making the noise. I'd suggest removing the drive from the case, covering the opening as best you can and turning off any background noise. Then running it outside with your ear or a solid object against it and your ear against the object... like a stethoscope.

If you determine the noise is coming off the drive.. Go to Seagate http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/warranty_&_returns_assistance

There you will find some tests you can do and all the necessary stuff to return the drive under warranty...assuming it is.

My Temps:
Motherboard ----------------- 32 °C (90 °F)
CPU ------------------------- 52 °C (126 °F)
Aux ------------------------- 47 °C (117 °F)
GPU ------------------------- 41 °C (106 °F)
Seagate ST3320620AS --------- 38 °C (100 °F)

When I first bought the drive and installed everything
in the case, the hard drive was extremely quiet for a 7200 rpm
drive. It was later, that it got louder. For about a week, the
noise level changed daily, now its just loud.

When its searching or doing something, the noise level doesn't change at all.

Thanks for the help, I'll check out their site. I was just curious if anyone here, has ever had a bad drive actually do this before.

Yup.. I have. Seagate has been known to release a few dogs from time to time. Maxtor too.. Noise being one of the symptoms. I've had entire lots of the same model fail in the same way. Fortunately.. they were all under warranty..

If you do everything they tell you, the turn around time is pretty quick.

Don't forget to get the data off of it!

there are freeware HDD utilities on the internet that can help you determine whether or not you have a defunct hard drive. some will use your computer's SMART HDD monitoring sensors to check, while others will perform basic read-write tests to check for inconsistencies in transfer rates and the like.

one thing to be VERY wary of is the dreaded "click of death", where your hard drive will all-of-a-sudden start clicking madly with no apparent reason. that is high time to start backing up your data, as the drive is on its way out.

as far as bad drives go, ALL manufacturers will turn out a bad drive. it's just the way of things- i've had maxtor drives that have lasted for almost ten years with nary a problem, while i've had other drives that start showing bad sectors within WEEKS of installing it. about the only thing you CAN do is make sure you read the reviews on the net to see whether or not you're about to buy a lemon drive.

also, i gotta ask- what do you have for cooling? it's a well-known fact that heat will often kill a hard-drive. as such, one of the leading causes of hard drive failure is an inadequately-cooled computer case, and the only way to cool a case is to add more fans. of course, that will depend on how many fans your case will accept.

btw- i've got the 400 GB version of those seagate HDDs, and both of them are rock steady at 25-degrees C. i've had them both for about a year now, and they've been the quietest, fastest drives i've had so far. my last computer had maxtor drives in them, which were fine until one of them prematurely died on me (read head on a drive arm disconnected, striking the drive platters).

My case has a fan in the rear, and a fan on the side panel.
Then 1 fan on the cpu and 1 in the power supply. I figured it
had enough? Total of 4 and it sits below my desk on a lower
shelf. (no sides on the shelf, its totally open all the way around the case)

Heres a picture of something close to what I have:
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/xoxide_1988_72985948

No clicking so far though, thank god.

see if there's a way to get a fan mounted in front. that way, you can draw in cool air that circulates through the entire case from front to rear. the fan for the power supply is more for the power supply only, as it gets rather warm. the same goes for the one for the CPU, as that's the hottest part of your computer.

in my computer, my front fan blows cool air through my two hard drives almost constantly. i'm assuming there should be provisions for hooking up a fan in a similar fashion in your computer, too. this isn't guaranteed though, as all cases are different.

also- how often do you check your computer for dust? it can clog up fans and otherwise hinder the ability for your computer to cool itself. if it's inundated with dust, you'll probably have to open your computer up and blast the dust out with some canned air. if you're unsure about what to do, you can have a computer-savvy friend help out.

a good freeware monitoring program to try out is "PC Wizard 2008", which will not only monitor your drives, but also your CPU, RAM, motherboard, and other peripherals.

I'm currently using Everest Home Edition to monitor the
heat and the fans. Its showing the fan turning at 2960 rpm.
I'll give that other program a try. Thanks.

I take everything out of the case and clean it often.
I spent around $1500 in parts, so I'm not eager to do it
again anytime soon.

My system:
Pentium 4 - D930 Dual Core 3 GHz
2 GB DDR2-533
300 GB Seagate Sata
nVidia GeForce 6200 - 512 MB AGP x 8
CD/RW
Sony DVD/RW

Front Side Bus Properties:
Bus Type ----------------------- Intel NetBurst
Bus Width ---------------------- 64-bit
Real Clock -------------------- 200 MHz (QDR)
Effective Clock ---------------- 800 MHz
Bandwidth ---------------------- 6400 MB/s

Memory Bus Properties:
Bus Type ----------------------------- DDR SDRAM
Bus Width ---------------------------- 64-bit

Chipset Bus Properties:
Bus Type ----------------------------- VIA V-Link
Bus Width ---------------------------- 8-bit
Real Clock --------------------------- 80 MHz (ODR)
Effective Clock ---------------------- 640 MHz
Bandwidth ---------------------------- 640 MB/s

here's another question- is your hard drive situated by itself, or is it next to another item, like a floppy drive, DVD-ROM, or another hard drive? the hard drive should placed at least one space away from other peripherals, as the air gap will help with cooling.



if THAT isn't the case, then you might want to invest in a "HDD cooler", which is a bolt-on fan/heatsink combo that connects to your drive. they're cheap (around $10) and are readily available. it might help drop the temps a little bit.

160gb hardrives and up generate more heat due to more disk in a more tight space.. Try 1 more thing, try running the harddrive out of the case, for a couple hours. To be honest turn it in since it sounds like it is under warranty, somtimes u just get bad hardrives.

Shakin, I have a couple of questions:

1. What kind of SATA is it? First generation = data transfer rate = 1.5 Gigs per second or Second generation = data transfer rate = 3.0 Gigs per second.

2. Are you using a SATA card in one of your PCI slots? If so, does that card support 1.5 or 3.0 gig per second transfer rates or both?

3. If you are not using a SATA card does your motherboard support either or?

4. Most important question. Do you have your configurations set properly on both the SATA drive and SATA Card or Motherboard so that the data transfer rates match (i.e., by jumper settings)? Example: 1.5 Gig Per Second setting on SATA Drive = 1.5 Gig per second setting on motherboard or SATA card, and so forth.

***If you are not sure of question #4, I highly suggest you check that. Mismatched data transfer settings will shorten the life of your SATA drive.

I just checked your model. It's a second generation SATA.

Whatever your interface is, whether it be by SATA card or directly into the motherboard, both need to be set at 3.0 Gigs/sec.

Case fans - Another strong possibility, just like KalamazooGuy had previously mentioned. Temporarily disconnect the 4-pin Molex Connectors to your case fans and see what happens.

One final possibility - Has your computer been the victim of an accidental power loss or a situation where it has crashed and your computer did not shut down properly? If so, your hard drive maybe fine, but is suffering from corrupted data sectors/partitions, causing it to work harder to compensate for it.