Possible HDD problem - help needed

[chrisinthesun20]

Help!

With my recently upgraded shiny new system (see sig), I seem to have a strange problem with the HDD (maxtor ATA-133 80gb)

Basically, it works fine, no errors, no read problems, no bad sectors found etc etc.

BUT

occasionally, usually when I'm doing heavy file copying (and sometimes in games if data is being streamed of the HDD), the drive (in the middle of reading) will kind of go "clunk" - just briefly, only like a half-second or so, then carry on. Nothing crashes, I get no errors etc, but in games its enough to cause a stutter, - the noise is a bit like a FDD being logged when there is no disk in the drive, but not so lound, and much shorter (and no, the noise is not the FDD!)

the drive is only like 4 days old - does the symptoms if describing mean I have a generally buggered, or soon to be buggered HDD that I should get replaced?, or could it be something else thats causing the problem? - another interesting fact is that when I went ot install windows it said showed that the drive already had a partition on it - bit strange for a NEW drive huh!?!?!?

Any help would be most appreciated, as I'm not about the go through the hassle of swapping the drive and re-installing EVERYTHING unless it is definately the drive that is the problem.

I can run SiSoft file transfer tests and stuff without any errors, so its not something which is causing my system to fall over, but it does not seem to be normal...

Thanks for any advice you can give!

[beeboy]

Did you go to Maxtor's site and run their diagnostic tool? Anything I have found on noisy hard drives is bad news.

[encino1030]

I Had the same problem months ago, and it made that noise for about 3 months (periodically), and then I could not boot half the times, then the drive just died, so I would replace it before you lose data, and have no control of when to replace it.

[chrisinthesun20]

cheers huys, you've basically confirmed my thinking, going to get it swapped tomorrow, then spend another fun-packed evening re-installing everything

Thanks!

[chrisinthesun20]

Just got the drive swapped over, and finally finished re-installing everything AGAIN

Good news is this drive sounds TOTALLY different to the other one, and seems to be fine - hurrah!