This is something I have been hugely unsure about all week, and it's honestly scaring me since this laptop is the only PC I have with me right now. I actually went as far as taking nearly the entire laptop apart and cleaning out the fan to be sure that wasn't the source of noise. Figured since so many of you guys at Retro are more intimate with hardware than I am, I'd get a second opinion. Pretty much, I've been booted into mostly Ubuntu for a good year, and everything seemed in the clear power management wise, despite the hard drive being a little warmer; I thought it was a negligible issue until recently. I'm starting to wonder if that extra dash of heat has slowly had an effect on this the lifetime of the main motor. (All clicking noises are normal, so those are good.) The motor gets blatantly loud and vibrates the case when the whole machine's hot from working on art. However, I booted back into Windows where the hard drive isn't stressed as much, (I think it gets parked more frequently when idle.) and hasn't made as much noise; in fact, it's nearly silent a lot of the time, I have to put my ear up to the touch pad to hear it. Although sometimes it warms up a bit and an obviously less dangerous level of noise returns. This is the noise I'm getting right now, recorded straight from the mic, and it calmed down in a matter of minutes. It probably sounds like it's vibrating a part of the case, but isn't as loud as it probably sounds on the recording, since it is from the mic mounted beside the webcam. Link to sound because Audio Player doesn't work for me. So, tl;dr, do I need to tighten the cradle later tonight, or is it simply getting older? I've had this laptop for a couple of years now as of this month, some wear is to be expected. To be on the safe side, I don't plan on booting into Ubuntu again until I get an external hard drive to install it to. I'd rather do that than stick to WUBI like I am now anyway, the tiny amount of fake swap space is so pathetic I might as well be running without a swap partition. EDIT : Needed to change the link.
Have you pulled up the smart status on it? I recommend just replacing it, as this is a recent problem and could be a sign of a failing hard drive or one that may fail soon. A hard drive that is getting louder and louder means worn and/or damaged bearings typically and failure may not be too far behind especially if it's getting bad. There is other things you can do to reduce annoyances or pro long the life of any hard drive like getting a quieter model (warning: they tend to be slower), providing more ventalation and using shock restraints to reduce vibration. Reducing unnecesory power cycling helps too. Powering off the drive when moving the machine, this is very inpractical in laptop sometimes and most will park the heads if a drop happens, but for a desktop this often quite practical as many will not park their heads when subject to shock. Not living in a earthquake prone area (kidding, I'm sure that is not avoidable, how often is nature tempted to shake the life out of you?)
Before you go out and replace what might not be a dying hard drive, I would advise trying this first. I used it about a year ago and found out one of my 1TB drives had around 112 days worth of lifetime left. It only works on connected hard drives (IDE/SATA), no external connections.
It's a estimate a hard drive can fail before then or after then. Their mechinical devices. And it's a bit misleading at best. Just because it says you 112 days worth of life doesn't mean it's going to only last 112 days. The program seems a bit of a scam to me as their other alternatives out there that can pull S.M.A.R.T. data without costing you a thing.
I didn't know what a smart status was until you mentioned it, so I'll have to look into it. I'm also on the east coast, so no earthquakes happen around here. =P Oh God, I had no idea hard drives have bearings in them; the extra heat could have done a number on them. At the rate it's happening on Windows, I should probably replace the drive within the month. Since I'm strapped right now, I've found three decent 2.5in hard drives in my price range on Amazon and NewEgg that I'm considering ordering. I could get more space for a little extra, but I won't need anymore than 160GBs on a laptop, I mostly use this for art, socializing, and 2D game development. It's a desktop PC that will need upwards of 500GBs of space. Western Digital 160 GB WD Blue SATA II 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive Toshiba MK1246GSX 2.5" 120 GB Internal Hard Drive for Notebooks (HDD2D91) Seagate Momentus ST160LM003 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive (This one's refurbished, so I'm curious about those.) However, the one thing that scares me about getting a new drive is reinstalling Windows 7, (Of which Microsoft officially allows downloading ISOs of, so long as you have a legitimate license key.) since I have never done that on a laptop. I have had to download several different drivers from HP for this thing, whereas a desktop PC would have only needed 3 unique drivers. Will the desktop still be the generic one while I install drivers burned to a DVD? I have a USB mouse, so pointing devices shouldn't be an issue. Honestly, it seems like such a hassle to install Windows that I might just install Ubuntu instead, and figure out why it kept the drive so warm while I order a new drive and wait for it arrive. Not sure if that's a bright idea, but I have to think of something, recovery partitions won't work here. I could order recovery discs too, but ugh, I hate bloatware like the plague.
The first hard drive on your list would be the best one most likely, but your milage may vary. Hard drive bearings (air type sometimes refered to as fluid bearings) are designed to be used all the time unlike other devices like opitical drives that would wear out prematurely from being on 24/7. Inproper operating conditions, poor storage conditions, defects in manufacturing and very old age is what usually causes issues.
I keep my laptop mostly on a desk, so it doesn't get jostled much, or woken up from sleep mode more than once a day, but a fan running nearly 24/7 while pointing at the desk probably couldn't help it stay chilly during the summer, on top of the extra heat while under Linux. Honestly, this whole thing kinda sucks, I've seen hard drives outlive the machines they were installed in. Although I would guess the desktops I've had in the past were able to stay cool easier since they were close to the floor in an air conditioned room, and had tons of space to breathe inside the cases. I'd have never known hard drives had bearings otherwise, they seemed so long-lasting outside of potential issues with moving parts. Also, turns out I can't order on Amazon through a checking account as a first time buyer, so I can't take advantage of that deal, (They could already be out of stock anyway, and the price changed while I was setting up my account.) so I've been browsing Ebay instead. Amazon will have to wait until I can buy a cheap gift card to waste on some books. So I've been keeping an eye on this hard drive, it's the same brand as the one I have now, just a lower capacity for the price. Hitachi 2.5" SATA 120 GB 5400 RPM HDD Laptop Hard Drive If you don't mind me asking, would a rebranded hard drive through MediaMax be a bad idea? I get the feeling they are refurbished units salvaged from old laptops, instead of unused drives. For that kind of money, I'd rather want one that's brand new. New 120GB 5400RPM 8MB 2.5" SATA/300 Hard Drive
If it was sent back to the manufacture and they checked it over and erased the contents, then it's probably fine. I wouldn't recommend it, though.
Yeah, that's what I worry about. The hard drive could have had any amount of wear and tear, while they basically slap a white label on it and call it a day. It's one thing that bothers me about refurbished stuff, a part of it could potentially be on its last leg, and they miss it during inspection. Anyway, I went ahead and ordered that first hard drive I linked, (A bit pricier than I'd like, but it's the price I should expect for a brand new and unopened drive; only the used ones are going for less.) so the payment is processing before it will ship. Thanks for your insight, Chibisteven, I felt a lot more informed about hard drives while shopping for one! I'll be a lot more gentle with this drive when it arrives.
Thanks, I'll need it when I do a fresh reinstall of Ubuntu. :v: This one's taking the whole drive to itself, I don't really care to dual-boot with Win7, because I'll probably spend half the night installing drivers. I think I'll be fine with Windows being on a separate hard drive. I am getting some additional opinions on what could have caused the wear from the Ubuntu forums, and it may be WUBI related. Linux file systems apparently write the whole file at once, which is fine on a Linux-native format where fragmentation is not an issue, but a hard drive formatted in NTFS where it can fragment files? The hard drive could have been pushed a lot harder since I never defragged this hard drive once. I'm thinking this is an odd combination of issues with running Linux inside a virtual file system, while also having regular and heavy access to the rest of the hard drive. Hopefully, this won't be a problem with a native installation.
NTFS is a long way since FAT32. Fragmentation is really not an issue, even if you have a 2 TB HDD that is constantly abused with <10GB free space all the time.
Fragmentation is not a file system thing, but the file system driver thing. FAT32 on XP and newer does not experience half as much fragmentation as it does on win98 for example. File system driver behaviour in the older OSes is to maximize disk space usage, and that means plugging any holes as they come by, and that is where the fragmentation comes from... Fragmentation is a non-issue from my experience, regardless of OS and filesystem. Fastest way to defrag is to copy all files to a different HDD, erase all that was on original and copy back (but its only an option if you have a HDD to put all/most files onto).
Wow, so fragmentation is not a bug, but a feature? I laughed a little because I never knew that. =P No wonder Linux partition formats never fragment, the drivers simply don't behave that way. Thanks for the insight there, guys. I can't blame WUBI for that, then. My only other guess is that with the entire OS and all my programs sitting inside a file, (Or virtual loop disk partition, as I remember it being called.) instead of a real partition, it was more stressful on the hard drive to access and write to. Even GIMP and Quake III's swap space was handled inside the WUBI file, and both programs saw heavy usage. I'm glad fragmentation is not at fault here either way, that seemed a bit scary.
The only thing Fragmentation can do is slow access time to a files on a hard drive (increased latency). Loading a program would just take longer because it's scattered everywhere. The is not actual problem with any solid state drive or flash device and just has more to do with the mechinical movement of the heads and plates spinning by on mechinical drives, they always spin at the same speed, too but files located in the sectors near the spindle of any drive will have a slower data rate because of the physics of any round flat spinning disc, more data will pass by on the outer edge before it finds what it wants, it takes time for the head to align with any track on the drive and then wait for it to spin right by the head reading it. A flash drive / solid state doesn't have the issue, so it loads instantly because it's on a microchip. In fact defragging those will wear them out faster, where a traditional hard disk has an infinite seemly amount of rewrites, a microchip has a finite amount.
That's a relief to know it only affects access speed, rather than forcing the drive to work harder. Now I'm a bit stuck to understand why the hard drive was making more noise, and in an interesting development, I haven't heard it reach the same noise level that I recorded in over two days on Windows, despite the HDD getting pretty warm while working on art. I guess this needs more research once the new drive arrives and I install Ubuntu natively onto it. Even if I panicked over nothing, having two hard drives is better than one. EDIT : Okay, turns out it does still make noise, but I can't hear it at all when I'm listening to music, and it doesn't vibrate the case for me to notice. Yeah, fragmentation isn't relevant with flash memory, since there are no physical moving parts needed to reach any of the sectors. I'd love to have an SSD for installing an OS to one of these days, boot times are much faster, or I could lengthen its lifetime by using it as a backup storage drive. It sucks solid state drives can only take so many writes for each sector, but seemingly every storage solution has a con that affects the life cycle, so it really depends on which downside is less inconvenient.
I use a fancy CF card for OS storage on my laptop, and soon I'll buy a cheap and slower CF to act as just data drive. Also has lifetime warranty, something I have not seen normal SSDs have... I'm pretty curious on how long will the card last, before I have to send it to warranty. I am certainly liking the vibration and shock immunity, and also pretty significant increase in battery life.
That is making me consider installing Puppy Linux to my micro SD card now. :v: 1GB of space would probably cover most of the programs I use, and I could use my 16GB USB flash drive as storage, which I already do since it's my backup. So that's one alternative I should probably have prepared. That's what I love about technology these days, there is always a way for everything. Also, the more I think about it, the hard drive may have simply went through normal wear and tear; there is no logical reason WUBI could have damaged it the more you guys are telling me. The internal heat probably did a number on it during the summer especially, since I keep my laptop on the desk for stability, and the fan had to work a little harder to keep the inside cool during livestreams. (Some lasted as long as six hours at a time.) I wouldn't do that again for art until I have a desktop, it royally sucks how laptops easily choke on desks. I don't really like using my laptop in my lap, it jostles every which way when I type.
I really hope that hard drive ships today, (The payment cleared last night.) the noise is not getting any better. Of which, one of my friends on Skype described it as tapping, and that's definitely double confirmation the drive needs the incoming replacement. The noise levels are still less than they were earlier in the month, so I shouldn't panic over it dieing until the tapping obviously worsens; that's about all the measuring of the lifespan I can do. In the meantime, I've been trying to think if anything I did to the hard drive in the past caused the fast wear. I remember when live streaming was a huge deal earlier this year in the art community, and I jumped on the bandwagon myself. Livestreaming sessions sometimes lasted six hours, and when I stopped streaming daily, I tried recording art videos instead. The first instance of the noise may have happened while I was recording as well, and that's when I decided to stop because I thought recording in three hour spurts, while also watching music videos in a tiny Movie Player window, was kind of pushing it for the hard drive. I have had hard drives that lasted several years, and they still worked normally, so I don't think extensive writing itself was the issue. Although the hard drive only has a tiny grill underneath the case to vent heat, (Which gets smothered while sitting on the desk.) so I'm starting to wonder if that caused it to wear down on the bearings faster. If it is, I may have to consider holding the laptop in my lap for any amount of game play, and I'm definitely not going to record or stream myself drawing until I get a desktop, where the heat can exchange in a much roomier case.
Stop your Laptop and wait tomorrow the new drive to arrive maybe? If you need the new one in order to back up irreplaceable data you don't want to take any chances.
