I've got a maxtor 200 gig hdd in my main winxp machine and its started making funny noises lately. It only happens when I'm loading up a game (half life 2 or doom 3). What happens, is the loading bar on my game will stop and I'll hear a long "beeeeeeep" coming from what sounds like my hard drive. If I'm playing an mp3 in winamp, the music will cut out after a few seconds (presumably it's buffer ran out), and then all of a sudden it'll sound like something grinding or a sort of pop and the game will continue loading. Other than that I've had no problems with the drive. How would I go about diagnosing this problem further? What could it be, drive failure? I'm backing up all my important info now just in case it does crash, but I'd like to diagnose what exactly is the problem. Any help would be appreciated. Hate has a way of closing the eyes, the ears, and the hearts of men.

It could have gotten bumped or something. Did you install the drive itself or did a friend install it? Did it come already installed in the computer? That noise you're hearing dosn't sound good to me!

You are running XP, so Right-Click on My Computer, and pick manage. Then go into Event View, then pick System Events. Look for Errors from a DISK device. It sounds like your hard drive is going bad. My suggestion is to replace it and RMA the bad one as quickly as possible. We've had a couple large Maxtor's do that recently. The good thing is that if they don't make that size any more, the'll send you a larger one.

I haven't heard of a hard drive beeping. I wonder if it's a problem with your CPU fan and the bios is beeping indicating an over temperature.

Better do a good backup if you haven't already, just in case.

I don't think I can RMA my drive. I've had it for a while, and I didn't get it retail. I got it from a popular online parts dealer and it was sold as a bare drive (with a nice price). I installed the drive myself and it has worked brilliantly. It's still working btw, but my experience of the phenomenon has kind of rattled me. I've backed up most of my important data to DVD, so thats not much of an issue. The whole thing would be more of an inconvenience than truly damaging if the drive goes out on me. I'd certainly prefer to keep it in working order though. As for my cooling, I'm pretty sure I'm okay. I have my PSU fan (pc power and cooling) two system fans controlled by my mobo (intel) and another system fan exhausting heat from the top of my case. I'v never had a problem with my cpu fan either. It's stock intel and appears to be working fine. I've read about others having their maxtor drives make beeping sounds and people maintain the common sense notion that hdds shouldn't beep, thus implicating something else. The thing is, my "problem" is neither persisting nor apparently debilitating to the functioning of my system. It's only occured twice or so and each time while I was loading something in a game. However, the noises it makes are, dare I say, shocking enough to worry me about the health of my drive. I just imagine the head of my drive suddenly ceasing movement as whatever mechanism is responsible for its movement strains and then suddenly "breaks through" whatever interrupted it. That's the sort of vision the sounds give me. Any suggestions as to how best to diagnose the problem? I checked my event viewer and I had no disk events. Hate has a way of closing the eyes, the ears, and the hearts of men.

It really depends on what sort of beep it is. Sometimes you will hear a sound like a single beep as the drive spins up after it's been in power saving mode. If the drive seems to be playing a little melody, this could mean that the heads are sticking to the drive. Maxtor drives will attempt to vibrate the heads free at varying frequencies. If the heads remain stuck to the drive, this vibrating will resonate on the platter and emit clear tones which sound a little like a wristwatch alarm.