Hard Drive Beeping

[ViolentJ]

About a week or 2 ago my partners hard drive started beeping whilst in use, at the same time all activity aside from the curser would stop.

After googling it we came to the conclusion that the drive was buggered so went out and bought a new one.

Just now this new drive has also started beeping and activity stopped.

Over the past few days she has been receiving memory errors and this morning a checksum error.

Would I be right in thinking that it's actually the motherboard with the problem?

Help!

 

[Has]

I wud say so !!!

Had a similar isse where the board was buggered.......

 

[ViolentJ]

need a few more opinions, i know mobo's can be picked up cheap (bought enough of them) but it's all money and time if it turns out not to be that.

 

[ViolentJ]

Example memory error:

The instruction at "0x7c910f29" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be read.

Not sure if the 0x7c910f29 is correct.(copy pasted from another source) The rest of the message is correct. She has received a few of these the past few days.


To me it does all point towards the mobo as that's what these problems seem to have in common.

 

[Daz]

Hard drives don't beep? They have no internal speakers.

They click, clunk, anything.. but not beep.

 

[ViolentJ]

trust me they do beep. Google it, many people disbelieve but i assure you they do beep!

At the same time the HDD light will flash in time with the beeps.

it is not the internal case speaker, the sound clearly comes from the HD

 

[ViolentJ]

Quote from: http://freepctech.com/troubleshooting/tsb012.shtml




Abnormal noises include:

• high pitched whining sound can be an indication of abnormal function
• Noises caused by mounting issues. This is due to either a high frequency vibration in the
  mounting hardware, or a potential drive failure
• Repeated, regular tapping, grinding or beeping, (there are no hard drives designed to emit beep codes when failing... some failure mechanisms may make a regular repeating beep, but it is not a beep code).

 

[wozzaa]

Sound to me like its a memory (ram) problem or mobo issue. However it could also be a software issue.

Try reinstalling windows if it screws up try different sticks of memory out of another pc you know work if all that fails it will be the hard drive but other ways would be a free way of finding out if anything else is wrong.

 

[Bubbles]

ooooo my HD did this a few months back... bought a new one and all has been ok, although sometimes it does make part of the sound that the old one used to...

 

[RobertCL]

If you are getting memory errors, it could be the motherboard, or as wozzaa suggested maybe your RAM. It could also be a cooling problem - have you checked all your fans are working ok.

You might want to look at http://www.memtest86.com/ to find out if your RAM is ok...

 

[ViolentJ]

just to be clear she is getting 3 things:

1. memory errors.
2. Checksum errors
3. HDD beeps (sign of failure normally) and pc freezes except for curser.

The HDD was replaced, replaced an 80Gig Western Digital that started doing the same (beeping and freezing) with a 200Gig Samsung (fresh install of XP) which is now doing the same thing!

 

[wozzaa]

Are the beeps making a pattern?

 

[Smokey]

how can a hdd beep without a speaker:S ?

 

[wozzaa]

What i was thining after having taken some of them apart they dont normally have anything inthem which can beep.

 

[Smokey]

Have you run the manufactures HDD utility's from there website?

if you want any other HDD tools pm me and I will see what I can send you.

 

[AcID ZeR0]

Could be overheating, I doubt it very much especially in this weather but whats your cooling setup like?

 

[ViolentJ]

The quote i posted above says the beeps are the failure mechanism.
When it beeps it does it constantly every second for up to a minute and the HDD light flashes with it.

I can't find any HDD tools for samsung drives so if anyone knows where i could obtain them from that wuld be great.

Very much doubt it's overheating. The drive is situated behind a HDD cooler and the case has one front mounted fan, 2 rear fans and an exhaust blower. When the other HDD was beeping, at the time the case didn't have any sides on it.

 

[Daz]

how can a hdd beep without a speaker:S ?

:clown:

 

[ViolentJ]

hmm now this is strange.

The drive started beeping again and the pc froze, couldn't shut down or anything so took the pluge and hit reset..... bad idea as it f**ked windows.

Formatted and reinstalled but the 2nd hard drive failed to show in the BIOS.
Took the side off just to check the connections whilst pc was still on and as soon as i did that.. beep beep beep... pc froze.

So i thought ok... lets sort out the 2nd drive not being detected first.. can only be the IDE cable or power... checked the power and that was in ok but was running on an extention with a connection to the side case fan. Whipped that extension off and hey presto the drive was detected and touch wood for the past 5 hours it hasn't beeped or frozen once.

Weird because it's the 1st HDD that was beeping and freezing, not the 2nd.

 

[David]

HD's don't beep....they click....

o someone has said that. it will be ur motherboard beeping..

 

[ViolentJ]

so ok maybe it beeps through the pc speaker but the beeping is HDD related. So far it hasn't returned.

 

[Aberclio182]

Simon had the same prob, when i first bulit my pc, had three brand new harddrives that did this. got a fourth and it was fine, and yes they beep if there is a fault.

 

[Griff]

Just read/replied to your PM Si.. Take it everything is ok now?

 

[ViolentJ]

so far so good... fingers crossed!

 

[Chris n nic]

Mine does this every now and again...everything works fine and doesn`t freeze with the noise but it is a really weird sound...like a bleep something else then another bleep (from where ever it is coming from!)

Chris

 

[FlamingMonkey]

Mine does this every now and again...everything works fine and doesn`t freeze with the noise but it is a really weird sound...like a bleep something else then another bleep (from where ever it is coming from!)

Chris

The People Under the Stairs, I've seen the film better move ASAP :dapprove:

 

[Chris n nic]

Actually it sounds more like R2-D2 under the stairs lol

Chris

 

[ViolentJ]

lol

Still so far so good. Looks like it may simply have been that section of power cable.

 

[ViolentJ]

well got a call not long ago to say the machine has gone tits up with numerous boot errors and failing to boot at all now.

Going to stop by PC world on the way home and see how much their mobo's are going for and see if a new mobo sorts the problems out. Seems a bit suss that a drive that's been working for over a year and a brand new drive would both fail so i'm guessing it's the mobo.

 

[Aberclio182]

simon take the harddrive back as faulty, then if the new one does the same then you'll def know that its something else. no point wasting money on a motherboard if its not needed! my harddrive broke in summer after just over a year, then got a new one and it was just the same, changed again and it was second time lucky lol, i have had 5 harddrives in under 2 years.

 

[ViolentJ]

had another fiddle before purchasing a new mobo. I believe it's the wiring as I did a simple tug test (pull on all the wiring) and it started beeping at me, if i nudged the wiring back it stopped and normal operation resumed.

I've replaced numerous adapters and rewired how the HDD's were connected up. The tug test was a success so we'll see what happens this time around.