Acer 5920 HDD question

Hi all...

I have the machine as mentioned in the subject line (running XP SP3). It is still under warranty - about 2 months left.

Over the past couple of days I have started noticing a strange whirring sound coming from the hard drive. This was certainly not there earlier. I have no idea what is causing this. I have not moved the machine off my desk for well over 2 months now.

Is this cause for concern?

While on this subject, I have another question:

I was thinking of buying a portable backup drive for myself as my existing one is full. Now, I am thinking I should replace the factory installed drive on the machine and replace it with a faster and higer capacity drive.

I am sure this can be done as per numerous threads here. The question is should I get the Acer authorized rep/ service guy in my country to do this? And should the drive also be sourced from Acer? I currently live in a country where buying off the market is a hit and a miss thing - don't want any oddball products, if you know what I mean!

Also, would this be a good opportunity to upgrade to Vista? I can get an OEM installation from Acer for a good price too!

This leads me to my last question:

Assuming I do all of the above - I also have the Office 2007 UltimateSteal edition (all legit!). If I change the hard drive on my machine, can I reinstall this on the new drive? Note that earlier I had the Office software on a previous laptop which crashed. I then bought the Acer and installed Office on it.

Apologies for this long post and thanks in advance for your insights and advice!

Cheers!

 

Its hard to say from just a description, but generally any sound coming from the hard drive that it didn't have before is cause for concern.

Find out what make the drive is and look for their diagnostics software. Drive manufacturers usually have an application that will check the drive is operating correctly. Acer may have suggestions themselves if you attempt a warranty repair for it. I would certainly recommend trying to get it replaced under warranty on principle, even if you still plan to replace it with a larger drive later.

 

Thanks. OK I will do as you suggest. I wonder, however, if hard drives are covered by warranty. The drive is a HitachiHTS, which I understand is a standard issue. The diagnostic software - as far as I can see - says 'device working normally. But that still does not account for this 'new' noise. Its a kind of noise that makes it clear that drive is spinning and this is what is disconcerting as this sound was not there earlier and naturally the drive was spinning too!

 

Well...by way of an update...I replaced the HDD with a 250GB drive. Got Vista in the process. Acer will replace the 160 GB drive, which I will convert into a mobile HDD (this still has XP SP 3).

In the process, however, I screwed up my Opera customization including all bookmarks etc. I still have that dodgy original drive - it has not yet crashed and I wonder if I could extract my Opera installation from there and transfer it onto my new drive with Vista!!!!

Thanks