Many users are confused about whether a hard drive that has been used for longer time works more loudly. This article will focus on this question and discuss about it further.
With regular and long-time usage, computer will absolutely fail when it reaches its lifespan. The same totally holds true for hard drives. Hence, when drive ages, miscellaneous issues will emerge. For instance, you may hear louder noises from the drive when it works. Now, in the followings, we’ll delve into louder noises in older hard drive.
Fragments
When it comes to something that influences hard drive performance, fragments will absolutely be taken into account. When you store a file to a hard drive, drive separates it into file pieces and scatter around drive platter. Next time when you want to read this file, drive should read multiple locations of the platter. Not only will it lead to slow performance, but also intensive activities will result in noises. If your hard drive is old and you haven’t defragmented it at regular intervals, it is sure that it will create more noises.
Wear and Tear
As we all know, over time, with regular use, hard drive will finally fail one day. In this process, its moving components are wearing out gradually. For instance, the drive heads may be prone to crash or may get in touch with the platter from time to time. Under such circumstances, you may hear grinding noises. In a nutshell, the older hard drive, the more easily the drive can wear down, thereby the louder noises you may hear.
Physical Damage
Aside from normal wear and tear, have your hard drive ever been subject to any physical damages? Most users will answer “Yes”. For example, you could drop the drive accidentally or place a drive in a crowded or overheated environment, etc. Besides, most of time, old drive platters or heads may be misaligned. In this case, with time going on, you’ll find that the clicking sounds become louder and louder, clearer and clearer.
Normal Sounds vs. Strange Noises
However, to be honest, during normal functioning, hard drive may create sounds, too. Therefore, it is a bit hard to distinguish between normal sounds and strange noises. If you have similar puzzle, you can refer to our previous article – “How to Identify the Noises of a Failing Hard Drive in Computer“.
Back Up Right Now
When your hard drive abruptly starts making more and more strange sounds, it is time to raise your vigilance in that it usually indicates the drive failure. In this scenario, you have to back up your data as soon as possible and purchase a drive for replacement. After that, you can restore data from backups to the new drive, similar to PST recovery from PST backups.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including SQL Server recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
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