Noisy Computers?

2 questions:

1) My laptop seems to have become a bit more noisy as of late in that I can year it processecing (clicking noise) nearly constantly; any way to keep this noise down? (I defrag regularly, run CCleaner, and just did a Windows DiskClean thing, which seems to have helped some).

2) My desktop (know this is a laptop forum) will not run Windows DiskClean, I just get an error message and the cleaning processes intiiates in an endless cycle on bootup. Any advice? (The error message lasts only aobut a second, so i don't really get a good chance to read it).

 

if its a clicking noise it's the harddrive.. and that usually means it's about to fail.

at this point i would get a cheap external harddrive to back up data.

i don't know about the desktop problem

 

Just in case you do not know about www.silentpcreview.com Maybe not this specific question, but they can be most helpful and educational about noisy computers. Dave

 

That very much depends on the type of clicking noise. Hitachi disks in particular (including mine) seem to have a reputation for very aggressive head parking whenever they are idle for more than just a few seconds, and this makes a rather distint - and potentially annoying, though not exactly loud - clicking sound.

While I did some research a while ago to learn that (most sources just seemed to equal clicking HDD with failing HDD - which isn't necessarily the case at all as described above), I also came across video and audio files of the clicking sounds produced by a failing hard drive, and it was much louder and more violent - closer to clunking than clicking in several cases.

Since we are apparantly talking about a disk that has only recently started making "clicking sounds", I guess there is indeed a chance this could be a failing drive - though if it's a fairly new laptop it could also just be the disk "settling in". The noisy head parking of my Hitachi started getting more promiment after I had had the laptop for a week or two, and then after another few weeks it settled down a bit, and now I hardly notice it anymore, though that's probably just as much to do with me getting used to it rather than the frequency having dropped significantly.

 

yeah hitachis do make a lot of noise.. but if it's not a Hitachi or it just started suddenly i would err on the side of caution. if it's a new notebook, the hard drive probably still has a warranty.. contact the hd manufacturer and describe the problem. The notebook manufacture would have a warranty also.. at least one year if you didn't opt for longer (but then you would have to send in the whole notebook to get fixed).

 

My hitachi hard drive has always been very quiet.