[Wolves] OT: Noisy external hard drive.

[DragonMaster]

Stephen Parkes wrote:
> On 17 May 2010 11:46, DragonMaster <LUG at clews.homelinux.net> wrote:
>   
>> Hi all,
>>     
>
>   
>>  Would you say this is a 'foible' of the mac trying to handle NTFS or
>> should I be concerned?
>>     
>
> I've got Macs reading NTFS with no problems.  If they are IBM or
> Toshiba 2.5" drives in the cases it could be the "tick of death" which
> doesn't mean they are broken now but does mean they probably are on
> the way out.  I've had loads of these drives break on me over the
> years (the one in my old Mac powerbook was one rebadged Apple and it
> died the same way)
>
> Hold it up to your ear and tilt it slowly from side to side.  If you
> hear a slight tick doing that it's time to start keeping regular
> backups and think about ordering the replacements.
>
> I've lost tons of code to these drives over the years (twice off-site
> providers of my source control went bust within a week of having a
> drive die, I have shite luck sometimes) and I seem to remember Re-Load
> had similar problems as well.
>
> They can last for 12 months after it starts and in some laptops they
> are so insulated for drive vibration you don't even notice until the
> tick turns into grinds and it's too late.
>
>
>   
OK, I'll keep an ear out.  I was surprised though that it was affecting 
both drives and only on the mac, hence the thought it may be down to the 
mac OS. 

Watch this space I guess... ;-)
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