Q45 Hard Drive Noise, Fan Louder (5 months old)

Hey,

I've got a 5 month old samsung and I've noticed recently access to the HD is alot louder than usual, a crunching kind of sound. And also, the fan seems louder, like its on more of the time.

Do you think this could be a case of dust (and should I open it up and look at it), or something else?

Thanks in advance

 

probably you got heaps of data stored in the harddrive?

 

Hard drive is about 50%, but I don't see how this would affect it. Maybe if it was heavily fragmented and seek times increased... I don't know. I defragged a week or two ago.

Any other ideas?
Thanks

 

It could be about to die.

I recommend backing up your files.


72oo

 

haha lord. Well, it sounds more like an old, loud hard drive, not like it's about to croak. But I will find out soon I guess! Maybe some SMART tool can tell me its status.

I wonder if Samsung will cover it under warranty

However, if the fan is dusty, it might not be cooling the hard drive properly, hence the noise (i've had this before, loud HD due to insufficient cooling). I may attempt to open it up to inspect the fan or monitor the temperature of the HD.

In any case, I have my data backed up

 

What brand of hard drive? Device Manager will give you the model number and then Google for the details. Samsung usually use Hitachi and Fujitsu hard disks (rarely their own) for which the diagnostic programs are here and here respectively. Hitachi HDDs tend to be noisier than average. You can reduce the noise using the Hitachi Feature Tool.

Assuming that the HDD passes the diagnostic tests, the cause of increased HDD noise and CPU fan activity could be some program which is forever running and using a lot of resources. Does the HDD activity like keep flashing? How is the CPU utilisation under light usage (you can use the monitoring page of RMClock to see the overall CPU activity and temperature - what temperature are you getting?). You can also check the CPU utilisation on the processes page of Task Manager and see which processes are clocking up the CPU time (you may need to Add the relevant column).

John

 

Thanks John, I will investigate further and reply when I get in this evening.