Hard drive "grind" at boot up?

[Vortex22]

I recently built a new computer (a few weeks ago), and I've been noticing the hard drive making a sort of grinding sound at power up. The best way to describe it is similar to the sound a floppy drive would make during POST, except a bit quieter. I haven't experienced any other problems with this drive; it doesn't make any abnormal sounds during normal usage.

Does this sound like a sign that the drive could be getting ready for an early death, or has anyone experienced a drive doing this normally during power up? It's a Western Digital 7200 RPM 250GB SATA.

 

[Vortex22]

I downloaded the WD diagnostic tool, and it couldn't find any problems. I've never heard a HDD make this sort of sound on power up though, so I'm still kind of worried.

 

[stogez]

If the program didnt find any errors its probably just the drive spinning up. If you start getting data corruption errors or something then RMA the drive.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I'd highly recommend backing up the data regardless though.

 

[briin79]

i got hd probs too. Back it up ASAP. My HD started clicking. and now i lost all 160 gigs of info i had. All that time and mioney down the drain. The grinding is a sign of it about to go out. back up while you can.

 

[Boyo]

It sounds like it could be a bad HD. I would back everything up and run a program called HD Tach. That should give you an idea of how it is running. Also run SMART in Speedfan to see how the overall health of the drive is.

 

[Vortex22]

Originally posted by: Boyo
It sounds like it could be a bad HD. I would back everything up and run a program called HD Tach. That should give you an idea of how it is running. Also run SMART in Speedfan to see how the overall health of the drive is.

Here are the results from HDtach. It looks pretty normal to me. Luckily I haven't put all that much on this drive yet, but I don't really have a replacement for the time when I'm without it if I have to RMA though

 

[goobernoodles]

Could just be case resonance. I'd take the drive out of the case and boot up to see if you still get it the issue.

 

[Vortex22]

Originally posted by: goobernoodles
Could just be case resonance. I'd take the drive out of the case and boot up to see if you still get it the issue.

You know, I was sort of thinking the same thing because I noticed this case making a bit of a vibrating sound when I ran the WD diagnostic. The sound it makes on boot up is pretty strange though, much different from the other case vibrating sounds I've heard. I HOPE it's just that though.

I also checked out Speedfan and it has the drive at 98% fitness, 100% performance.