[brainout]

Not sure of the forum policy on threads. At first I thought I should put it instead in the thread about Brian's buzzing PC, but maybe that's not right. So feel free to move this topic as you desire.

In my case, the PC chirps. Yes, just like a bird. A baby bird. When it's writing to disk; not every time, but at unpredictable times. There is more chirping more consistently, if there has been extended disk writing. Else, if only sporadic and short, no chirping or very little. I get the same sound when heating a frying pan on my stove, de vez en cuando.

Any idea what that means? I've never had an HP computer before, so wonder about this being intentional? I can still send it back to the seller, but I really don't want to do that. It seems to be working fine. Just curious about the chirping when it writes to the IDE drive.

[waldojim]

If that sound is what I think you are referring to, then you have a dying hard drive. Do you have that chirp followed by several sharp taps? If so, start looking for a replacement.

I had one do that for nearly a year before dying, and have had ones that die quickly. Get yourself a diagnostic program (from the website if the drive manufacturer) and run a full non-destructive test. Also, back up the drive.

This post has been edited by waldojim: 01 September 2012 - 01:00 AM

[mjd420nova]

Other than a slight HHUUMM when on, hard drives should be pretty silent. In the early days, some removable platter hard drives did emit some chirps or beeps after the platter was mounted, letting you know it was ready. One chirp was to recognize a platter and two quick chirps signified it had found a workable partition. Today, some units may make some small startup noises but should be quiet otherwise. I have sen some drives that had some borderline sectors in the boot area and would chirp intermittently after booting. A diagnostic found some questionable sectors, marked them bad and moved the software around to good sectors and the noise went away.

[brainout]

mjd420nova, on 01 September 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

Other than a slight HHUUMM when on, hard drives should be pretty silent. In the early days, some removable platter hard drives did emit some chirps or beeps after the platter was mounted, letting you know it was ready. One chirp was to recognize a platter and two quick chirps signified it had found a workable partition. Today, some units may make some small startup noises but should be quiet otherwise. I have sen some drives that had some borderline sectors in the boot area and would chirp intermittently after booting. A diagnostic found some questionable sectors, marked them bad and moved the software around to good sectors and the noise went away.

Well, this one is 500GB, so it's not from the early days; the HP 6400 Workstation was invented in 2006, but this drive is supposed to be brand new. So maybe it's something proprietary to HP's own hardware, to chirp? I've already tested the HDD for errors, and got none. Did alert the seller, so we'll see what happens.

Thank you for telling me this, so I can inform the seller. I made a bootable clone drive of the HP, and as yet have nothing but programs on it. Haven't run all the diagnostics, but did full chkdsk, and there was nothing to repair.

[brainout]

waldojim, on 01 September 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

If that sound is what I think you are referring to, then you have a dying hard drive. Do you have that chirp followed by several sharp taps? If so, start looking for a replacement.

I had one do that for nearly a year before dying, and have had ones that die quickly. Get yourself a diagnostic program (from the website if the drive manufacturer) and run a full non-destructive test. Also, back up the drive.

Already did that when I got it, thank you.

[brainout]

Apparently it's a characteristic of the Seagate hard drive, click link here. So if someone wants to move or delete this thread, I understand. Model in this case is Seagate ST3500641AS, and it's still being sold. What I want to know is, whether this is the original drive in the HP6400 or whether it was installed. On the one hand, I didn't want a used drive, but on the other, I didn't want one from Thailand, either. So in a way, this is a mixed blessing.

[waldojim]

For what little it is worth, I currently own 3 Seagate drives (500gb, 1tb and 2tb), none make that noise.

EDIT: Reading that thread you linked to, it seams that they have not come back yet to say if that is a malfunction or not. As their rep mentioned, it is best to treat it as though it is a malfunction for now, until they know otherwise.

This post has been edited by waldojim: 02 September 2012 - 07:47 AM

[coastie65]

waldojim, on 02 September 2012 - 07:39 AM, said:

For what little it is worth, I currently own 3 Seagate drives (500gb, 1tb and 2tb), none make that noise.

EDIT: Reading that thread you linked to, it seams that they have not come back yet to say if that is a malfunction or not. As their rep mentioned, it is best to treat it as though it is a malfunction for now, until they know otherwise.

With all the moving parts in there, it would seem that something that needs lubrication is dry. Won't last long that way.

[brainout]

coastie65, on 02 September 2012 - 05:24 PM, said:

waldojim, on 02 September 2012 - 07:39 AM, said:

For what little it is worth, I currently own 3 Seagate drives (500gb, 1tb and 2tb), none make that noise.

EDIT: Reading that thread you linked to, it seams that they have not come back yet to say if that is a malfunction or not. As their rep mentioned, it is best to treat it as though it is a malfunction for now, until they know otherwise.

With all the moving parts in there, it would seem that something that needs lubrication is dry. Won't last long that way.

To both of you guys: I wrote to Seagate, stressing how their reputation was at risk, because it's not only 'my' model, which had OLD references; but rather, to the currently-sold Barracudas, with references as late as July and August this year. I also found 'my' drive model in Amazon, and wrote a review with the five different speculations in that forum, about the problem, to warn people away from the drive, pending Seagate's answer.

Usually I get a manufacturer to respond more quickly if I write them and do a review in Amazon, so that's what I did here. In my case, since the drive is supposedly newly installed on my HP, and drives are cheap, it's easy enough to take it to my computer guys and swap it out. I'm sure the guy who sold me the computer wouldn't mind giving me a credit or something, if I asked him to do so. (For $70, I probably won't, it seems too petty; I'm sure he wasn't aware of the chirping.)

Then again, maybe nothing is wrong. But I don't want to take a chance. That new machine has TWO fans in it, so I know it's not thermal. Drive tests just fine, no SMART errors, etc.