[SWLUG] Re: Intermittent Hard disk problem

[Rhys Sage]

That disk drive is getting very interesting. Last
night, it suddenly started buzzing again. It buzzed
for a few minutes and then went back to its normal
self. It is, by the way, a 5 month old Western Digital
40GB drive. After yesterday's scare with it, I backed
up everything to DVD and am now considering installing
a second 40GB drive in mirrored RAID (pretty much as I
do on my server).

Today I pulled the drive out and gave it a gentle
shake to see if there was anything loose. Nothing
sounded out of place. I put it back in and it started
buzzing as soon as the PC was switched on but went
silent pretty quickly after. I wasn't 100% convinced
it was that drive but when I stuck my head down there,
the noise was loudest nearest that drive. The buzzing
sounds very similar to the noise the fan on my old PC
used to make - that too went quiet after a few
minutes. 

I checked the drive with an online drive testing
utility and it came up OK. No smart problems - not
even a historical smart problem. I've downloaded a
test utility that I have apparently to put onto a
floppy disk, from the western digital user site. I'll
try that later.  

Is Western Digital perhaps not a good brand of disk? I
had a DOA Maxtor Fireball 3 40GB once, which prompted
me to RAID my server. Looks like I'll be RAIDing my PC
too!

Rhys


	
	
		
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