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A month ago, I've added a hard drive from an old computer of a friend and it started to buzz, my solution now is hit it with the IDE cable plastic, but 5 minutes later starts to buzz again.

Hard drive specs:
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
- Certified Repaired HDD
- 250 GB
- IDE interface

It's not the main drive, I store big files on it.

My question is what thing is causing that noise, is no duplicate because the possible questions didn't specify if is a buzz, clicks, or other kind of noises.

And my concern about the label that says "Certified Repaired HDD" and it's durability, I'm sure that this drive have more than 5 years old.

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  • What is your question?
    – Jan Doggen
    May 20, 2015 at 6:37
  • possible duplicate of Hard drive making a weird noise
    – Jan Doggen
    May 20, 2015 at 6:38
  • @JanDoggen my question is what is causing that noise? and if I should get worried about that
    – FukYouAll
    May 20, 2015 at 6:44
  • 2
    Noises coming from hardware is always something to worry about, sometimes it's an easy fix like a cable hitting a fan, but in your case I wouldn't trust that drive with any important data because it could be dying. It also could run just like it is for another 10 years, HDD's can be unpredictable like that. May 20, 2015 at 7:07
  • Your drive sounds very old, I agree with Doug Watkins, do not store important data on that drive.
    – Chris
    May 20, 2015 at 7:27

1 Answer 1

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The most common cause of a buzzing drive is the mounting. Depending on whether this is a laptop or desktop. Certainly this is true of desktops & servers.

You can fix this by getting some plastic washers and adding them between the HDD and the mounting. You can also get dedicated drive noise dampening kits.

Options are more limited in a laptop and I've never come across the same kind of noise there.

If you can run the machine without a cover so you can get to the drive when the machine is active, does the noise stop if you apply light pressure to it? If so, probably a mounting issue. If not and the internals of the drive are making a noise, this is certainly going to be catastrophic at some point since the internal tolerances are so small.

Should you be worried? Not if it is mounting noise though you should still fix it as the last thing you want is movement in the drive mounting. If it is internal, then certainly you should and, as others have commented, you should plan for replacement.

In either case - or indeed any other case - you must always back up your data. No modern drive is "reliable" in an engineering sense, HDD's fail remarkably regularly, SSD's are getting ever more reliable but they certainly fail too. To say nothing of fire, flood and theft.

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  • Especially if the noise has a "ringing undertone" to it, mounting would be the issue. Internal mechanical noises are usually of "flat tonation".
    – AcePL
    May 20, 2015 at 9:06
  • Also I noted that the file system operations are very slow, I've checked with SeaTools, S.M.A.R.T. and it says that is OK.
    – FukYouAll
    May 21, 2015 at 1:46
  • Unfortunately, SMART rarely indicates actual drive problems. Check the mounting first as this is generally pretty straightforward. If the drive is slow, you probably want to do some low-level data checks on the disk to make sure you don't have errors creeping in. This is not uncommon with HDD's. May 21, 2015 at 5:52

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