[LocalH]

W.A.C., on 02 February 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

dsrb, on 02 February 2013 - 06:03 AM, said:

I know it's not been confirmed whether it's your disk, but jeez, this is bad logic: It may be about to fail, so before you back up your possibly precious data, thrash it with virus scans across its entire used capacity? Seriously think about that again before deciding whether you're going to do it.

Well, I have a weird issue where out of nowhere, Firefox will open and get redirected to some page. I don't know what's causing that problem, but it happened twice and some person who uses WOT has the same issue. With this in mind, I probably have either a virus, malware, or spyware on my computer so I think it's a good idea to do some scans before transferring a lot of stuff.

dsrb's point is, if you think your hard drive is failing, you want to access it as little as possible until you get it fully backed up. The longer you run it and run virus scans on it, the less likely it is to keep running well enough to copy data off. Proper procedure here would be to clone the drive as soon as possible, boot with the new drive and run all your scans on it. Plus, with failing hard drives, the more often they are powered down and back up, the more likely they are to not spin back up. If you have really valuable data on there, you need to keep the drive running as close to 24/7 as possible until you can clone the thing.

I'm not so sure that's a hard drive issue though, I'm leaning more towards a power supply myself. Next time you hear it give off that noise, bang on the power supply's fan from the outside and see if it stops or otherwise affects the sound. If it does, then you know your PSU is on its way out.

This post has been edited by LocalH: 02 February 2013 - 07:41 PM

[W.A.C.]

LocalH, on 02 February 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

dsrb's point is, if you think your hard drive is failing, you want to access it as little as possible until you get it fully backed up. The longer you run it and run virus scans on it, the less likely it is to keep running well enough to copy data off. Proper procedure here would be to clone the drive as soon as possible, boot with the new drive and run all your scans on it. Plus, with failing hard drives, the more often they are powered down and back up, the more likely they are to not spin back up. If you have really valuable data on there, you need to keep the drive running as close to 24/7 as possible until you can clone the thing.

Understandable. I just really wanted to scan everything first. Outside of the my Ad-Aware scan, everything scanned in a pretty reasonable amount of time. I'm blown away Ad-Aware is so bloated now that it took over 11 hours to scan my computer when a program like AVG takes less than 50 minutes.

LocalH, on 02 February 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

I'm not so sure that's a hard drive issue though, I'm leaning more towards a power supply myself. Next time you hear it give off that noise, bang on the power supply's fan from the outside and see if it stops or otherwise affects the sound. If it does, then you know your PSU is on its way out.

I listened to the noise this morning and it's definitely coming from where my hard-drives are located. Next time I boot up my machine, I'll definitely follow Chibisteven's power rail cable advice.

[W.A.C.]

Just an update on my situation. I unplugged the power rail to my C-drive and the noise was still happening so it's definitely not my C-drive that's the problem. When I tried booting up my computer again, I had the power rail to the D-drive unplugged and a noise wasn't being made. However, when I tried booting up my computer again with my D-drive's power rail plugged in, a noise wasn't being made that time either so hard to say if my D-drive is at fault. My dad thinks it's the fan next to my hard-drive's that's a problem but I need to do another test to make sure it's not my D-drive. Would've done a test this morning, but I don't have the time.

[TmEE]

it is not so hard to sick your finger in a fan, or block the fans when the machine is off and then unblock them one by one. The machine will last many tens of mins with stopped fans before things get hot enough to overheat.

[W.A.C.]

I'm probably going to have to take out both my C-drive and D-drive just to be able to reach this specific fan. I did a test this morning with both drives disconnected and the noise still happened so neither of my hard-drives are failing.

This post has been edited by W.A.C.: 07 February 2013 - 09:03 AM

[W.A.C.]

Folks, this is what can happen if you forget there's a fan behind your hard-drives.



I built my computer in 2009. It's very possible today was the first time this fan was ever cleaned. ASRT now works fine.

This post has been edited by W.A.C.: 07 February 2013 - 07:30 PM

[Chibisteven]

W.A.C., on 07 February 2013 - 07:30 PM, said:

Folks, this is what can happen if you forget there's a fan behind your hard-drives.



I built my computer in 2009. It's very possible today was the first time this fan was ever cleaned. ASRT now works fine.

Gross. That be the problem then.

[dsrb]

So, was it spinning at all (or more than one per minute)? Do you think the noise was due to it trying to spin, failing miserably, and the silence was due to the PSU giving up and cutting power to it? I don't know much about how PSUs work, but it otherwise seems weird that the noise stopped after a while.

Anyway, I guess that fan was performing an important job, if the computer was getting unstable without it and is fine now. Good outcome!

[W.A.C.]

ASRT crashed.

;_;

I guess I'll need to clean that fan further. If that doesn't solve it, oh god...

[dsrb]

I did wonder whether one failing fan behind (well, in front of) the hard disks could add enough heat to crash the system, but I didn't want to jinx things… Perhaps there's something else that's causing those issues, but hopefully not.

[W.A.C.]

So my computer's startup had that loud buzzing noise again. I stuck my finger in that specific fan and the noise stopped entirely. Even after trying to clean it yesterday, it still didn't look that great so I think I'm going to need to figure out some way to get that fan out of my computer so I can do a super cleaning on the fan. The fan is built into my computer's tower and is located in a difficult to reach place. I definitely think the fan is responsible for my crashing problem because ASRT ran noticeably longer without crashing yesterday in the two times I tried to play it.

[dsrb]

In the meantime, have you tried just running your PC with the side off? Maybe even point a room fan at it, if the former doesn't work. It must be shifting a lot of air for its failure to cause the entire system to crash.

[TmEE]

the bearings have worn out and no amount of clean helps to make it silent... unplug it and leave it so or replace it.

[Overlord]

Yeah, replace it. Not like a fan is going to break the bank.

[W.A.C.]

dsrb, on 08 February 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

In the meantime, have you tried just running your PC with the side off? Maybe even point a room fan at it, if the former doesn't work. It must be shifting a lot of air for its failure to cause the entire system to crash.

Haven't tried that, though with the way I have my computer set up, it would be difficult to have it where a fan is next to it without the computer being in my way and vulnerable to whatever my cats feel like doing to it. :/ I might try that sometime this weekend though.

TmEE, on 08 February 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

the bearings have worn out and no amount of clean helps to make it silent... unplug it and leave it so or replace it.

Yeah, I agree. I cleaned the hell out of it a week ago sometime after my first attempt cleaning it and it still makes noise. Granted, the noise is quieter and less annoying, but it's a noisemaker nonetheless. Here's the results of my cleaning from last week.



I completely forgot I could pull the top part off of my computer so this part of my PC was really damn dusty.



My fan that is making the noise.



How it looked after cleaning it. I'm a bit annoyed that I failed to make the image sharp. I'm going to need to pull it out again at some point just to know what it says. :/



I noticed this one cord is not plugged in. I have no idea what it does, but it looks like something that's part of my fan. Since it's not plugged in, is it possible it might caused some of my computer problems?



When I put the fan back in my computer, it got stuck. Since this piece made it really difficult to access my fan after it got stuck...



I broke that piece. >_> Hopefully that piece was never going to be useful to me in anyway. Even with that piece no longer there, it's still really difficult to access that fan now that it's stuck. I really hate how this tower was designed in a way where this fan is such a nightmare to access.

Overlord, on 08 February 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

Yeah, replace it. Not like a fan is going to break the bank.

Unfortunately for me...



I'll no longer be completely broke on Tuesday, but I don't have the financial means to replace it until then. Would've made this post sooner, but I'm so frustrated my financial situation that I figured waiting wouldn't be a bad idea.