Hard drive noise/speakers

I have two hard drives on my XP SP2 system, in the past couple of months i've noticed a squeeling noise coming from the drives, constant noise, it gets louder when i move anything on the desktop, play games etc... and now the noise is coming through my speakers.

Any ideas what is going on?

I have a Seagate 80 gig and a Western digital 120gig installed, with a basic speaker setup, no problems the past year since the hard drive was installed.

 

With anything spinning that has a squealing noise I would suspect the bearrings. The only reason I could see the noise getting louder while playing a game would be if the game called for excessive drive axcess. As far as getting louder when stuff is moved I could only guess that the movement is allowing 'harmonics' to set up and the sound is being amplified.

The part that really throws me is the sound comming through the speakers. Are you sure that the sound is comming from a hard drive? Is it possible it could be comming from a CD? I'm guessing here but it MAY be possible that if a CD is failing it could be sending a signal through the audio cable. Mayhaps someone else can confirm or throw out that possibility.

Open your case and see if you can actually narrow down the sound to a device. If it is a hard drive and they are stacked it may be difficult to do this. If that's the case I would make a boot floppy and see if the noise is there on a floppy boot. If it is, disconnect one drive at a time until the noise goes away. This will at least let you isolate the problem device. Just be sure to do any disconnecting or connecting of the drives with the power off!!!!!

One other note. Another place to look for the noise would be one of your fans.

 

Ok, i've just ripped apart my pc to track down the problem, and its the power supply, i've been having a lot of power failures lately, i.e. the pc just dies and i removed all the hardware and the noise was still around with just the motherboard and the power, and it was definalty from that, its 6 + years old anyway, so might as well get a new one..

 

Sometimes tracking things down can be tedious and time consumeing but I figure what ya just did was a lot cheaper than taking it to a shop.

Right choice on replacing the PS. Since I have some laying around I might replace the fan, prpbably where the sound is comming from, but with it being 6 years old and failures... get a new one. If you build your own systems ya might consider getting a supply a fair amount bigger than you need. Then if you upgrade your system you already have one that will handle it.

Glad ya found the trouble... I do have to say though that I'm still confused about the sound through the speakers.