Intermittent HD whine. About to die?

[Eug]

I have ancient (decade old?) IDE 120 GB WD drive that I've been using in my PVR. In the last few days I've noticed a couple of times where it suddenly became a lot louder, with an irritating high-pitched whine. I'd unplug the PVR and then reboot, and everything would be fine again. It's not the rest of the PVR, because there is no fan in the PVR or any other moving parts.

The interesting part of this is that the drive actually still works fine. It records fine and plays back previous recordings fine too. Nonetheless I removed the drive and put in another drive, this one only half a decade old.

I've since put the 120 GB drive in an external enclosure for use as a secondary backup drive, but wonder if it's about to die. What is causing the whine anyway? Bad bearings? I haven't heard the whine since actually, but I've only copied maybe 75 GB worth of files to it over a few hours, and otherwise it's been off.

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

Did you try running WD Diag on it? LINK

 

[VirtualLarry]

A drive that old uses ball bearings. After a few years, especially if they have been run 24/7 all that time, they start to whine. It does NOT signal immediate failure. (Unless accompanied by a grinding sound.)

However, the whine can be annoying, so you might want to replace it just for aesthetic purposes.

 

[Rvenger]

I have ancient (decade old?) IDE 120 GB WD drive that I've been using in my PVR. In the last few days I've noticed a couple of times where it suddenly became a lot louder, with an irritating high-pitched whine. I'd unplug the PVR and then reboot, and everything would be fine again. It's not the rest of the PVR, because there is no fan in the PVR or any other moving parts.

The interesting part of this is that the drive actually still works fine. It records fine and plays back previous recordings fine too. Nonetheless I removed the drive and put in another drive, this one only half a decade old.

I've since put the 120 GB drive in an external enclosure for use as a secondary backup drive, but wonder if it's about to die. What is causing the whine anyway? Bad bearings? I haven't heard the whine since actually, but I've only copied maybe 75 GB worth of files to it over a few hours, and otherwise it's been off.

I had an issue like this when the polarity was reversed on my plug outlets. The harddrive would whine inconsistantly, but your issue sounds like age.