Hard drive making a beeping noise. Help?

[Orange Furball]

My Seagate internal 1 TB hard drive is making a beeping noise every time I plug it into the SATA power.

I have not tried to see if I can access the data as I don't want to break it before I can get a spare hard disk to back it up. Has anyone had this happen? My hard drive is full of all of my games and is my only storage drive.

Also, I didn't know where to put this thread. Sorry if it's the wrong place.

Thanks.

 

[Astroboy907]

What kind of beeping? Grinding, high pitched squeal?
I'd recommend just what you are doing- keep from using the drive until you get a good diagnosis or have a drive ready to transfer too. IMO it sounds like it is dying...

 

[Orange Furball]

What kind of beeping? Grinding, high pitched squeal?

I'd recommend just what you are doing- keep from using the drive until you get a good diagnosis or have a drive ready to transfer too. IMO it sounds like it is dying...

Not a squealing. Almost like a speaker (I know there are no speakers in drives) like a short beep then silence then beep then silence. I was afraid of the drive being dead. This is very unfortunate

 

[chown33]

What sounds like a beep is probably the drive's head armature moving back and forth very rapidly. There might be several reasons for this, but one is that the drive is trying to re-read some data that's reading incorrectly.

Technically, the CRC (or other error-detection code) is failing, so the drive knows the data it read was bad. One of the strategies for retrying is to move to a nearby cylinder, which requires moving the head. Because the head transport arm is usually powered by a voice-coil motor, the rapid head movement makes a noise just like the voice-coil in a loudspeaker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_coil#Other_uses_for_the_term

If the drive isn't dead yet, you should act as if it will be soon. You're doing the right thing by not turning it on, ordering a replacement, and working out a plan to get the data off the "beeping" drive.

 

[Astroboy907]

Not a squealing. Almost like a speaker (I know there are no speakers in drives) like a short beep then silence then beep then silence. I was afraid of the drive being dead. This is very unfortunate

Yes, if it repeats like this constantly I would definitely be looking for a drive replacement. Maybe upgrade along the way- that's always nice

 

[Orange Furball]

What sounds like a beep is probably the drive's head armature moving back and forth very rapidly. There might be several reasons for this, but one is that the drive is trying to re-read some data that's reading incorrectly.



Technically, the CRC (or other error-detection code) is failing, so the drive knows the data it read was bad. One of the strategies for retrying is to move to a nearby cylinder, which requires moving the head. Because the head transport arm is usually powered by a voice-coil motor, the rapid head movement makes a noise just like the voice-coil in a loudspeaker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_coil#Other_uses_for_the_term



If the drive isn't dead yet, you should act as if it will be soon. You're doing the right thing by not turning it on, ordering a replacement, and working out a plan to get the data off the "beeping" drive.

Thank you so much! Very helpful.

Yes, if it repeats like this constantly I would definitely be looking for a drive replacement. Maybe upgrade along the way- that's always nice

Yes upgrades are very Nice! Thanks haha

 

[Orange Furball]

Ended up picking up a 3TB. $99 only.

Trying to recover the data. The drive is recognized but is corrupt. Wish me luck!