# Help Please! Drive makes strange noise (not clicking, etc) .. Audio mp3 file...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-drive-makes-strange-noise-not-clicking-etc-audio-mp3-file/289978>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 14, 2005, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-drive-makes-strange-noise-not-clicking-etc-audio-mp3-file/289978 "2005-02-14T06:20:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![isam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3d9bf3/32.png) [@isam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isam)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-drive-makes-strange-noise-not-clicking-etc-audio-mp3-file/289978/1 "2005-02-14T06:20:48Z")

</div>

My drive seems to have started making this noise. In addition, the OS won’t recognize/mount it at all, and all the usual methods for data recovery don’t seem to recognize the drive either. The drive is normally in an external firewire enclosure, and I assumed that it was this enclosure making the noise, but after moving it into the computer itself on the internal bus, it makes the SAME noise. Has anyone heard this before? If so, do you know what it means, and how to fix it?

I’m sure this can’t be good, but it has left me stumped.

here’s an audio clip of the noise, if it helps

[http://www.lifeofexile.com/noise.mp3](http://www.lifeofexile.com/noise.mp3)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-drive-makes-strange-noise-not-clicking-etc-audio-mp3-file/289978/2 "2005-02-14T12:44:10Z")

</div>

I can’t hear the noise (my computer at work doesn’t have speakers) but if your computer doesn’t see the drive at all, it’s possible that the drive has crashed. Hard drives making strange noises are a bad, bad, bad, bad thing.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![isam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3d9bf3/32.png) [@isam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isam)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-drive-makes-strange-noise-not-clicking-etc-audio-mp3-file/289978/3 "2005-02-14T20:20:31Z")

</div>

well, it doesn’t appear the drive is making noises in the sense of screeching or grinding. It just seems like more of a warning tone of some sort. I was hoping someone had heard this tone before and could identify what it means (other than guessing that the drive is dead) and perhaps maybe there is something I could do. I’ve tried getting the drive to spin by moving it up and down, holding it on its side, upside down, rapping on it with my knuckles (lightly), etc.

Nothing seems to get it to stop making the noise and spin up. I feel that if I could get it to spin up, at least I could recover _some_ of the data that is on there. Unfortunately, the data that does reside on the disk is pretty important (but im not quite sure important enough to warrant using a professional data recovery service).

Anyhow, if anyone has any ideas on what the noise could mean, please let me know. I’m sure someone out there knows! 🙂