Noisy hard drive in a Win10 PC...

ChrisR

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Hi, we have quite a noisy hard drive in out Win 10 Dell PC. The machine is several years old but until recently has been doing just fine as a general purpose machine (I do photo edits on my MacBook Pro). The noise level varies during the day, but at its worst it is very very noticeable. I unplugged the Samsung USB drive to make sure it wasn't that.

So, it seems like it might be a good time to replace the (500 MB) drive, perhaps with a SSD?

I've been backing up the PC with Crashplan for Small Business onto the Samsung USB drive and to their cloud backup service. However, looking at that service, it seems like it's not suitable for using in a disk drive replacement; basically it just backs up the user areas.

Is this the sort of upgrade a not-very-techy person should be able to do? And if so, can you please point me to some guidance? Thanks...
 
I have used Macrium Reflect Free version to clone both system drive and others.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

It is quite straightforward but needs some tech savvy by way of either plugging the target drive direct to a port on the motherboard or using a hard drive dock/housing as a temporary attachment. Once cloned then removing the old drive and fitting the cloned one.

Very much down to your comfort zone or how much you are prepared to tackle?

HTH :)

PS I think most SSD makers have their own cloning software???
 
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I'd be tempted to put my Win operating system and programme files on an SSD drive but save my files, photos, videos, etc. to a hard drive. That way you won't run out of space or lose your saved files if the SSD fails (I understand SSD can only be written to so many times before they fail, and they tend to be smaller, so files get overwritten more frequently than a larger (say 1 TB) hard drive.

I had to clone a failed hard drive last year, luckily I managed to get it to fire up again so dashed out and bought a new hard drive and USB connecting dock to fit it and plug into the PC while I cloned the original drive. You'll need to know what make, model and type your existing hard drive is if you're going to replace it with another HD, and to get the right cradle/dock to fit, connect and power it.

I can't remember which free cloning software I used now, but it worked OK. I had a look at a few but some seemed quite complicated.
 
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I think most SSD makers have their own cloning software???

I'm a fan of Samsung EVO SSD's and their bundled sotware for cloning works like a dream.
I've also been using Acronis for years and that does a good job as well plus it has the benefit of allowing you to make an image of the HDD once you have the OS etc reinstalled.
 
I have used Macrium Reflect Free version to clone both system drive and others.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

It is quite straightforward but needs some tech savvy by way of either plugging the target drive direct to a port on the motherboard or using a hard drive dock/housing as a temporary attachment. Once cloned then removing the old drive and fitting the cloned one.

Very much down to your comfort zone or how much you are prepared to tackle?

HTH :)

PS I think most SSD makers have their own cloning software???

Thanks. My technical self-confidence is rather low despite 50+ years in IT (which means that when I started a 10 MB drive was the size of washing machine!).
 
I'd be tempted to put my Win operating system and programme files on an SSD drive but save my files, photos, videos, etc. to a hard drive. That way you won't run out of space or lose your saved files if the SSD fails (I understand SSD can only be written to so many times before they fail, and they tend to be smaller, so files get overwritten more frequently than a larger (say 1 TB) hard drive.

I think if this was the main photo-editing machine I might be inclined to agree with you. (And you've made me slightly concerned that my main photo-editing machine is a MacBook Pro with only a SSD drive!) However, this machine has a 500 GB drive with less than 200 GB used after 3-4 years of use. It's basically my wife's email machine!
 
Hi

Have you checked what is stated in task manager under hdd, after upgrading my old machine to Win 10 it seems to have slowed down and the hdd, which is the c drive is at 100% a lot of the time.
 
Thanks. My technical self-confidence is rather low despite 50+ years in IT (which means that when I started a 10 MB drive was the size of washing machine!).

When I started in the world of work......not in IT but very exposed to as I was at the first major London hospital to go tech.

They invested in old DEC systems including Winchester drives as well barrel drives......when the computer suite Aircon went wrong the barrel drives suffered head crashes taking the whole system down. In due course the lab I was in got separate computer though linked in unit, again I think a DEC about the size of 6 four draw filing cabinets put together......that was just to handle the results data from one lab. The problem if the main suite went down the doctors could not access the patient test results, so would phone the department.......... trouble was then that they relied on us rather than the main system :(

Oh the fun old days, until i left for the world of business and the IBM system36 that that employer bought........and the IBM recommended software company who though we told them in the scoping period still did not account for the fact that we had customers with 5 digit telephone extension numbers. The company ended up having to take them to court for that expensive failure!!!
 
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Are you sure the noise is related to the hard drive? Could be, dust in one of the pc fans, you'd be surprised how much noise it can make especially when they are running at full speed, e.g. when the machine is maxing out.
 
Is this the sort of upgrade a not-very-techy person should be able to do? And if so, can you please point me to some guidance?

The SSD has two connectors that need to go into it.

Currently the two connectors are living on the Hard drive.

Take off carefully from hard drive.

Remove hard drive from machine.

Put SSD into machine ( I use hook and loop onto the ordinary hard drive bays and stick the SSD to where the Hard drive was sitting )

Put the two connectors into the new SSD.

Restart PC with windows 10 disc in the disk drive.

Follow instructions to install win 10.

Have a second PC handy to look up online anything you get confused about the win 10 install.

It may ask you to format the SSD but it is should be quite straight forward.

If you want to get fancy you can create partitions in the SSD storage and allocate drive letters to them but you don't need to bother really.
 
Of course, advice about, assumes that current hard drive is a sata connection and not an ide connection. If an older pc, then there is a chance that it is ide connector and pc may not even have, a sata connection.
 
When I started in the world of work......not in IT but very exposed to as I was at the first major London hospital to go tech.

They invested in old DEC systems including Winchester drives as well barrel drives......

DEC! Talk about a blast from the past.
A company I worked for from the mid 80s until the 90s invested in a DEC system.
The offices initially used x286 IBM clones then x386s then x486s.
For the life of me I can't remember what the network was called back then (it was before 10BASE2) but a colleague and I networked 2 buildings together, it used a type of coax that had points that you screwed a NOD to then used a serial cable to connect it to the PCs.
The network was rock solid, the x386 and x486 clones my colleague and I built were more reliable than the IBM bought ones and the DEC was up and down like a pair of whores drawers! :D
 
DEC! Talk about a blast from the past.
A company I worked for from the mid 80s until the 90s invested in a DEC system.
The offices initially used x286 IBM clones then x386s then x486s.
For the life of me I can't remember what the network was called back then (it was before 10BASE2) but a colleague and I networked 2 buildings together, it used a type of coax that had points that you screwed a NOD to then used a serial cable to connect it to the PCs.
The network was rock solid, the x386 and x486 clones my colleague and I built were more reliable than the IBM bought ones and the DEC was up and down like a pair of whores drawers! :D

I was in the NHS from 1973 to 1980.....a time of some significant changes....so just pre dating the time frame you mention.
 
Hi

Have you checked what is stated in task manager under hdd, after upgrading my old machine to Win 10 it seems to have slowed down and the hdd, which is the c drive is at 100% a lot of the time.

I'll have a look at that tomorrow, thanks for the tip...
Are you sure the noise is related to the hard drive? Could be, dust in one of the pc fans, you'd be surprised how much noise it can make especially when they are running at full speed, e.g. when the machine is maxing out.

I guess it could be the fans... how do I tell the difference? There's definitely not much load on the machine when it happens though. Last time I noticed it really bad, I was watching CrashPlanPro doing its housekeeping where it compares files between the hard drive and the backup disk...

Of course, advice about, assumes that current hard drive is a sata connection and not an ide connection. If an older pc, then there is a chance that it is ide connector and pc may not even have, a sata connection.

I think it's SATA but will check, thanks.
 
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