Hard drive beeping noises?!

[CubanCorona]

I have two Seagate Barracude SATA drives on a mobo integrated Silicon Image SATA RAID controller. After the OS started freezing up, I noticed beeping noises coming from the drives! Yes, I opened up the case and indeed the noises are coming from BOTH drives!

Any idea what's going on here? I suppose the sounds could also be described as short, rythmic whines, but they are so short that they sound like beeps.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Is your PSU over stressed? Post specs on rig please.

 

[rcalzada51]

Are the sounds steady and repetative or irratic. Could be overheating problem. Could be PSU over stressed (drives can't maintain RPM because power is not stable thus drives are trying to spin up causing little sound?). Remove one drive temporarily and restart. Does it make the same sound? Post more details please...

 

[CubanCorona]

You know, that might be it... any way I can check?

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Athlon XP 2800+
Antec 330W PSU
Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM
(2) 160 GB Seagate Barracuda ATA Drives
Integrated sound/video

 

[CubanCorona]

steady and repetative... ill remove one and restart.

 

[CubanCorona]

OK, so it seems like the beeps don't start until the computer has been on for a while. They start simultaneously on both drives after the system has been running for a while.

 

[rcalzada51]

You may also want to check your Power Saving Settings in both the BIOS and your OS. The Barracuda drives have 4 power modes.
Active, Idle, Standby and Sleep. The drive will spin down or spin up when your system enters or comes out of a Standby and/or Sleep mode. If your system is trying to force the drives to enter a standby state after a period of time and your PSU does not meet the standards properly, The drives could be trying to maintain the proper RPM while your PSU has switched into a low power mode. The drives will keep trying to spin up causing a high pitched whine every few seconds. Try Disabling all the power saving features in BIOS and your OS and let it run for a while. see if it happens again.

 

[CubanCorona]

Thanks guys. I'll look at each of the possibilities and let you know what happens.

 

[CubanCorona]

All of the power saving features in the BIOS were off. I tried to perform a clean OS install, but the install failed, informing me that the drives may be damaged. Removing one drive yields the same results. Are these drives just bad? How weird. I think they went bad at the same time...