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That you hear when your computer shuts off.

Lately my PC started it doing while being on. Is it the Power supply, or the Hard drive?.

That way I can substitute it.

Thanks for any help.

Several of my computers produce a clicking sound when they turn off like you described, and it's the hard drive. If the hard drive is doing this while the computer's on, it may be dying.

Thanks, LiteOnGuy.

Well, next july is its 3rd anniversary. It'sa WD 27.3GB.

I was thinking of buying a new WD, 40GB special Edition (my storage HDD is a Maxtor ATA133 80GB).

BTW, When playing games and when that noise/sounds appears the game kinda slows down. So, yeah, as you said it must be the HDD.

Can't be the Power supply, I just bought it last Jan.

Thanks again.

Strange, check if you have smartdrive enable on your bios setup. Most of the times when this sounds start happening smartdrive give you warnings to back up your data becuase your HD is dying. It happened to me once.

There are some tools at Western Digital's web site that you could use to run some tests on the drive. This might be a good thing to try before replacing the drive.

BTW, I really like my Maxtor 60GB ATA133 7200RPM drives. The newest revision (with FDB motor) is extremely quiet, and it's fast.

s.m.a.r.t. ? If it's this one, I do have it enabled.

I don't know how much warranty does WD gives to their drives but you should check if yours still has it ( 3rd anniversary, maybe it doesn't ).


PS: Hey bto, what does your signature means?

Good thought. A drive that's that old may very well come with a 3-year warranty, in which case it would still be under warranty!

Well, unfortunately 3rd anniv. meant Warranty is up (3 years, when it was still 3 years). Oh well, Gotta get a new OS HDD. I have a WD 40GB Special Edtion in mind. Opinions?.

My Sig, well, it's the lyrics to a song: "The Jungle Brothers - Doin' our own dang." One of my all-time favorite songs. Pure Old skool Rap.

Thanks for the help, Cigna. Appreciate it.

I'm confused. You said that the third year is next July, which would mean that it's less than three years old now, right?

If it came with a 3-year warranty, then it's still under warranty!

Or did I misinterpret something?

Nah, my bad, I thought I bought it in july, but I actually bought it in may (may 5th ), I just dug out the receipt. Oh well, it had to crap out on me right after 3 years.... some timing.

I hate it when that happens...

LiteOnGuy wrote: If the hard drive is doing this while the computer's
on, it may be dying.

One of my clients computer recently did that clicking job, and i asked her "hey can you hear that click click click click" and she said ya.. and i said "that is the sound of death"

Run a drive repair utility like nortons and maybe it will find the bad spot and repair it or move data to a safe spot and mark the bad block. You also might want to make sure it's not just the power cable getting loose and then the power cutting in and out and making the drive click as it stops and restarts. I've had this happen many times and usually just have to re twaek the connecter so it's tight again and plug it back in.

I ran norton, the WD utilities, and no dice. The drive is crapping out, externally. Oh well.

As for the power cable, and connections, I checked them and all. Again, not this. I guess it was just the HDD's expiration date.

I went ahead and bought a WD Special Edition 40GB from NewEgg.

I hope the new drive works well for a long time!

Well, in my area OfficeMax has the 40GB SE for $29.99. I was tempted to buy it but I'm waiting for the 120GB.