Amber alert! Main rig in trouble.........

[Assimilator1]

I noticed yesterday early afternoon a faint whine/buzz coming from my main PC, and as the afternoon went on it got slightly louder, so after slapping it made no difference lol , I thought I'd better pop the side off to make sure no wires were hitting a fan (similar noise), but nope! Anyway, it was dinner time so I left it til later. It was getting slightly noisier through the evening......
Come this morning it sounded like their was an angry wasp stuck inside! So I'm going to look into it now, sounds like it's coming from the lower end of the PC, so not the ancient Corsair PSU (~11yrs! lol) but maybe the mbrd or grx card.
The mbrd is fairly new so under warrantee (although that would be a royal PITA to RMA of course!), but the grx card is about 1 1/2 yrs old so probably out of warrantee? (I'll have to check, it's a Power Colour one [edit] 2yrs). I assume theirs no easy fix for failing power delivery circuits (would it likely be failing caps?).
Anyway, I'd better look into it now before it blows up & takes the whole rig out!
Wish me luck! ........

 

[StefanR5R]

You may be able to locate the sound source further if you roll a sheet of paper to a tube, then use it to increase the directional hearing of one of your ears. "Lower end of the PC" may already be the best achievable locating though. Other idea: Pause the GPU and hear what this does.

 

[Assimilator1]

I did try something like that (when working on cars I sometimes use a hose pipe to track down AC leaks & noisy bearings etc), I tried to use a small plastic tube, but it was no use. I couldn't think of something, but your idea is perfect & simple! Thanks

Anyhow, shut it off, swapped the RX 580 for my old HD 7970, booted up, no noise, but it took aaaages for the post screen to come up & 1 of the HDDs 'clonked' a few times!, hmm.....
So I put the RX 580 back in, and no noise! Maybe just because it'd cooled off? (but same applies to the mbd). And again the Post screen took ages to come back (maybe 30s+) & the HDD clunked again before hand.

Oh & before swapping cards, their was no GPU crunching going on (& fans @ 0 RPM). When I fired up a game last night it made no change to the noise.
So atm I have no whining/buzzing noise (typical), but theirs no load on the GPU either. So I need to do that (& check the HDDs!).

[edit] Yep, the old 1TB Samsung HDD has disappeared from windows explorer & HD Tune, that explains the clonking & slow to Post. Not surprised actually, that HDD has played up before & I had long since moved most of the important files from it. But I hope I can get it back again as their is some handy stuff on there!

Turns out it is listed in Disk Management as 'unitialised', I resisted it's suggestion to re-intialise it for now as I guess that will effectively wipe the disk?

 

[ao_ika_red]

[edit] Yep, the old 1TB Samsung HDD has disappeared from windows explorer & HD Tune, that explains the clonking & slow to Post. Not surprised actually, that HDD has played up before & I had long since moved most of the important files from it. But I hope I can get it back again as their is some handy stuff on there! Turns out it is listed in Disk Management as 'unitialised', I resisted it's suggestion to re-intialise it for now as I guess that will effectively wipe the disk?

Try using different sata port and power, it worked once for me.

 

[Assimilator1]

I tried it without the SATA plugged in (the PC boots much quicker then), but I hadn't tried another power plug, I'll do that now, thanks .

What do you guys reckon about my re-initialisation question?

 

[StefanR5R]

Look around for a data recovery service provider.
If you can't find one who's price but also professional level meets your expectation for this particular occasion, look for a data recovery software. (I don't have experience with either, but my brother told me once that he used a recovery service once for an external HDD; I don't remember the actual outcome.)

Before this, don't do anything in a rush with this disk. ;-)

 

[ao_ika_red]

look for a data recovery software

Recuva works quite well for a freeware.
I also used Ubuntu once to recover a "failed" external HDD. Windows couldn't read it, but somehow Linux saw it as perfectly normal drive.

 

[Assimilator1]

Stefan
Oh theirs nothing important on that disk (IIRC!) as I mentioned, so I don't want to spend money on it . I thought it was going to fail a couple of years ago as it occasionally refused to come online, or drop out when on, but strangely it hadn't done that in a year or more. Anyway I bought the 3TB HDD as a replacement, copied over important stuff like photos, music, and videos I wanted to keep. But on the 1TB HDD their are/were videos I'd recently downloaded that I hadn't got to sorting or watching, so that's a pain to lose but I can get them again. As luck would have it, only last week I copied off/deleted 10s of GBs of videos from it!

I've just done a 7min OCCT GPU test on the RX 580, no issues . Maybe the noise was coming from the HDD too?

ao ika red
Nice one, thanks , I'll try Recuva.
Never touched Linux & I'm not going to start now , very weird that Linux could read that drive of yours though!

 

[Assimilator1]

Recuva says 'unable to scan due to unknown file system type'.
Time to try to re-initialise it! Damn, disk isn't showing in Disk management now.......

Forgot to say, different SATA lead & different power plug made no change, not surprised, but it was worth a try.

 

[Howdy]

I believe it is trying to tell you.............Hammer time!

Can't touch this

 

[Ken g6]

I have a 5TB drive that's had problems lately. 1040 bad sectors. I copied everything off but one file that wouldn't read. It's also only 4 years old, and has a 5-year warranty, so I need to RMA it.

I had to replace that drive with a 4TB from another computer. That computer's been having even more problems. At the end of the F@H race, it smelled hot so I just turned it off. I later replaced the PSU with one so underpowered I could only run with a 750ti video card. Later a blue Clear CMOS light on the mobo started coming on, and now it won't boot at all.

Oh, and @Assimilator1, in the USA "Amber Alert" is code for a child abduction alert.

 

[Assimilator1]

Lol, well no child abduction here! Certainly some data disappearance though .
Sorry to hear about your PC , at least I only lost a non trusted HDD!

I just tried unplugging/re plugging the power a few times to see if I could get it going, it spins up (sounding a little rough), clunks 4-5 times then spins down (I remember now that it very occasionally did this before).
So yep, it's dead, RIP Samsung 1TB HDD, not sure how old it is, maybe as much as 10yrs old?? (seems they came out ~12yrs ago, lol). Well it hasn't done bad I guess, although I think that's the 1st one I've had totally die on me (I've had one with bad sectors before, including this Samsung!). Oh & apparently I bought the 3TB HDD at least 5yrs ago, so the 1TB has been limping on for sometime!

 

[Howdy]

My how time flies when you're crunching numbers!

(Oh, thanks to myself I have that stupid song in my head..........arghhhhh) Can't touch this!!

 

[ao_ika_red]

Do you have 3.5" SATA to USB3 adapter? If you have, worth a try.

 

[Assimilator1]

Hmm, no I have a IDE to USB though! TBH, even if I did, I seriously doubt it would do anything as the drive won't stay spinning (as per my previous post).
They'll be a service for it tomorrow lunchtime followed by a wake ..........drinks welcomed!

 

[IEC]

Got nothing to lose, might as well try ye olde freezer trick on the drive.

Maybe it's old enough it might actually work?

 

[TennesseeTony]

Freezer trick? I might turn in anothe 500 uni tasks after all when I get home!

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea could do, is that what that trick is usually used for? Thought it was for something else, but I can't remember what!