IBM Travelstar 6GB noise

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grumps
  • Start date Start date
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Grumps

Hi

I've just acquired an old Dell Inspiron 3700, 192MB RAM, 6GB HD, Win98SE.
It all seems to run fine, battery life good for the age, keyboard had a few
faulty keys but removing cleaning and replacing has done the trick.
Problem is the whining noise from the hard disk (marked as DARA-206000,
4200rpm, JAN-00). Also, when the disk is removed, just flipping it over you
can hear something moving inside. It doesn't sound normal. I don't mean
shaking it, just merely turning it over in your hand.
Probably on its way out, unless this is a 'feature' of this old drive.
But, to the whining noise. Can you lube the bearings, would this help?
Ta.
 
kony said:
You can hear a similar sound flipping many old hard drives
over, it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

The whining is typically just old ball bearings, also not
necessarily a sign of a problem though if they wore down
enough it could cause one, or it could still develop some
other problem unrelated to the noise.






It does seem that way but some drives do it due to design...
Run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on it to
double-check it, although at it's present age it has already
met or exceeded it's expected lifespan so if longer term use
of the system and/or important data would be stored on the
drive, the most conservative solution would be to go ahead
and replace the drive - and it would be a fairly
significantn performance increase, those old ~ 6GB drives
were pretty slow compared to today's 5K4 RPM or higher
current capacity drives. To use a significantly larger
drive the system might need a bios update, you might check
on that if considering the change.



Agreed, the whining noise is very distracting in some cases
but unfortunately you cannot lube it, not reasonably at
least and it is not expected to do much good even if you
tore apart the bearing in order to access it... might damage
it instead and still at this point the whining tends to be
deformation in the bearings that lube won't fix. It's just
old and wearing like any mechanical part does.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the very comprehensive (as always) reply.
 
Grumps said:
Thanks for the very comprehensive (as always) reply.
Click to expand...

I've just put a travelstar 8Gb in a desktop. On this case it said that
rattling was to be expected. Not those exact words but I'm not taking
it out again.

Mark
 
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