The hard drive is rattling. What is noise level? What you can do on your own when your hard drive is cracking

A hard drive, also known as a “hard drive,” is an important component of any computer. It not only installs the operating system, but also stores important documents and files (music, videos, photos). Like any other component, it wears out and breaks down over time. And the main symptom of this is the appearance of noise and buzzing. hard drive. In this case, the first thing to do is to help avoid sudden breakdown.

However, this may not always be the reason. Increased noise levels also occur in new drives of some brands and models, and this is their normal operating condition.

Below we will look at several options for reducing hard drive noise: manually and programmatically.

A.A.M.

Newer HDDs support a special function " Automatic Acoustic Management", with its help you can adjust the speed of movement of the reading heads, thereby reducing the noise of the laptop hard drive.

Default this function is disabled, so to enable it we use a utility called “WinAAM”, it is free and very lightweight. You can find and download it on the Internet.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that after setting the quiet mode, the speed of the drive also decreases. However, this is very difficult to notice by eye.

CrystalDiskInfo

If for some reason the previous program did not suit you or did not help, hard drive It still makes noise under load and because of this, then I recommend using this utility. With its help, we will configure the AAM function more flexibly. But it also has other useful features, for example, you can view detailed HDD parameters, current state and check for errors.

So what to do:

After which the hard drive will start working with the new settings in quiet mode.

There may be several reasons why CrystalDiskInfo may appear:

• The HDD is old and the utility simply does not support it
• Physical or logical malfunction

How to diagnose the HDD was discussed at the beginning of the article.

Defragmentation

Another method that can help you if the hard drive of a laptop or computer makes a lot of noise or buzzes during operation. As mentioned above, this is due to the moving mechanical heads, or rather their speed.

To do this, we will reduce the distance they need to cover to get to the desired section of the disk and read information from it. This is done quite simply, using regular defragmentation. It will arrange clusters with information in order, reduce the distance between them, thereby increasing the speed of access to them. Simply put, it will be easier for the hard drive to read the necessary information, the load on it will decrease, and subsequently the noise and hum of the hard drive will decrease.

But you can also use the utility built into the system:

This way we will get rid of the humming and buzzing of the drive.

Manual method

If you have desktop computer, and not a laptop, you can use one of the methods suggested below.

Now you know what to do when the hard drive begins to make foreign sounds during operation (noise, buzzing and humming) and you can solve this problem yourself using the methods discussed above.

A short video lesson on the topic

Hi all! Today we’ll talk about why a hard drive can break down and why it makes noise. So let's say let's look at two questions. I will try to write everything in an accessible language, I will not burden you with any terms or anything so incomprehensible..

So, let's first start with the first sign that the hard drive is not doing well. This is me talking about why the hard drive makes noise, clatters, whistles, clicks and makes other sounds. Such sounds mean you can’t immediately tell that the disk is dying. No, he can work in this state for a long time. All these sounds only confirm that the hard drive is mechanical. And mechanics has its limits, which were reached in the distant past. That is, I mean that everything that could be squeezed out of the hard drive has already been done, and for a long time!

All attempts to make the hard drive faster are partly a marketing ploy. Well, that's it. Any sounds in the disk usually indicate that either the disk is not installed correctly, or it is many years old. Well, there are also some exotic reasons, rare ones, for example, something inside is not working properly. But I’ve never had this happen, maybe because I always use Western Digital drives.

Discs can make noise in different ways, some less, others more. I wrote that I only use WD, yes, this is true, but recently I had the chance to buy a cheap Hitachi 2 TB drive. It is server-based, so it is so noisy that many users would probably think that it would soon end.

I actually had a lot of hard drives! Once there was even a Samsung and it also made noise, and none of them broke due to the noise. Now let's get closer to the topic of noise. If you run some program and the disk makes noise and crackles, then this is not as bad as if it crackles for NO reason or does it ALMOST constantly. This is where you should get worried. Also, an even more dangerous symptom is when the disk makes such sounds... well, as if some kind of machine (centrifuge type) stops, clicks and then starts again. This already suggests that the problems are serious and incomprehensible.

Stopping the plates inside the disk and starting them is all regulated both by the disk board itself and by Windows. There is an option in Windows that I recommend turning OFF! This is an option that stops the disk if you haven't used the computer for 20 minutes! This is harmful, there is a lot of debate on this topic on the Internet, but I think it is harmful, period! Because the disk, well, according to physics, spends more energy on spinning the pancakes, and not on maintaining their speed!

Look, about the fact that Windows stops the disks after 20 minutes. Here's how to disable this nonsense, which means clicking the Start menu, and then selecting Control Panel. If you have Windows 10, then this item is in another menu, to open the menu, press Win + X. Well, there will be a bunch of icons there, you select Power Options. Then in the window, select the item Setting up a power plan, but only where there is a checkmark (or a circle):

Then click Change additional options power supply:

And there is something like Hard disk > Disconnect hard disk via, here in the Value field you need to set zero, then the disk will not be disconnected:

So, we have already figured out that some noise in the disk is normal. But if something happens for no reason, it is NOT normal. The disk may make noise for no reason because of Windows, maybe it is doing something there. If the hard drive starts to periodically click and clatter, then there may be problems with the board (its brain is broken, sort of) or with the motor inside, or something else.

Now let me tell you what's inside the hard drive and you can understand why it makes noise or why it breaks.

So, look, the hard drive is in a sealed case where air should not get in. Because there are dust particles in the air and so on, all of this can INTERFERE with reading or writing to the disk. In this case, a disk with even a little bit of dust inside will not work for a long time. But in fact, there is a micro-hole in the disk housing with a special filter, by the way, this is why there is NO vacuum in the hard disk. They repair hard drives in special rooms without air, just kidding, I mean without dust

There is also a pressure washer in the hard drive, which can also create noise, this is the main part, given the speed of rotation of the drives! The speed of reading or writing also depends on its operation; if something is wrong with it, then of course the disk is finished. And there are some people who are still trying to clean the inside of the hard drive on their own at home, well, I think you understand what they end up with... This is what this washer looks like:

The disk itself is an aluminum disk in the literal sense, round and thin. Fingerprint, sunlight, dust, water, well, I think you understand that all this will completely destroy the data on the disk!

There is also a small spindle washer that serves as an intermediate link between the plates, of which there may be several. By the way, that’s why I like it when a hard drive has one platter. Of course, the washer and the diameter of the hole in the disk are all perfectly made. But I am writing this so that you understand how critical all kinds of shaking and pushing are for hard drives; all this can easily damage the device. This is what it looks like, this spindle washer:

The actuator unit is one of the important components of the disk, probably the most important, it is the thing that reads data from the disk or writes it. There are handles on the actuator block, the so-called heads, which work very quickly, waving back and forth to read information from the disk. As you understand, they cannot really run reactively, so a hard drive will never be able to work like an SSD, alas. If the actuator block is shifted, so to speak, from its axis by even half a millimeter, then the disk will not work correctly and will most likely die. Therefore, it is very important that the disk operates in IRON peace in terms of extraneous vibrations

This is what the actuator block looks like:

Then comes the disk motor, this is also a very important part. The engine turns the pancakes themselves, and at the same speed, well, with a jet speed, in short. I think it's several times faster than a motorcycle. Well, this motor is controlled by the disk control board, to which the motor contacts go and possibly some kind of signal cable. This is what the drive motor looks like:

There is also a magnetic element of the actuator coil, which helps to swing the heads more accurately and quickly so that reading occurs faster.

And lastly, this is probably the control board. This board is very important, it has a control chip, a power chip, in general, this is the brains of the hard drive. It depends on it how the disk works and how it replaces bad sectors normal, from the reserve area, which by the way is not rubber. Between this board and the disk body there is a layer, often made of foam rubber. It is needed to prevent some kind of short circuit and sometimes it has a cooling effect for the board. This is what the hard drive control board looks like:

Today there are different hard drives, some are cheap, some are expensive, they are all made with high quality, and even the cheapest new modern drive has enough speed to run Windows on it without glitches. Well, that is, so that everything starts normally, but of course not as reactive as on an SSD.

So, what can be concluded, well, in general? What can cause a hard drive to make noise:

• if it makes noise when writing or reading, then this can even be called the norm, because the disk is MECHANICAL, with one manufacturer it begins to make more noise over time, with another it makes less noise;
• Very loud noise means that it is difficult for the disk, or rather the heads, to read or write information to the disk; that is, they do it, but it is difficult and over time they will no longer be able to write data into these difficult cells; then you will have dead areas on the disk that cannot be restored, they are usually called bad sectors;
• It happens that it is not the disk that makes noise, but the computer case in which it is installed; the disk can create vibration, as a result of which the case begins to make noise; this can be corrected by using special rubber gaskets when installing the drive in the bay;
• if the disk does not make noise, but makes clicks periodically or often, well, it clicks, booms, clicks, then these are serious problems; and all because such sounds cannot be produced by the recording or reading process, here you need to copy all the necessary information from the disk, then format it, and TRIM the area of ​​the disk that is the slowest; In short, you can simply limit the disk, exclude the problem area from its operation; in this state the disk can still work, even for a long time;
• if it happens to you that the disk clicks or clicks when you OPEN something, a program or a file, then this means that the disk cannot read the file and then restarts its heads inside; that is, the heads are first parked and then returned to work again; such areas must be removed from the disk URGENTLY;
• the disk itself, well, many models, can make noise within normal limits and this is natural; the higher the speed of the disk, the more noise it makes, for example, 5400 disks are less noisy than 7200 disks; there are discs even at 10,000 rpm and at 15,000, they make a decent amount of noise, so to speak;
• on the Internet you can look for programs that reduce hard drive noise, well, the most interesting one I’ve seen is Automatic Acoustic Management (it’s very easy to use); it seems to reduce noise, but at the same time the speed of the disk also decreases; in general, I personally haven’t used it, I wouldn’t dare say so; instead, I did something else, I installed a software cache for the hard drive, so that what Windows accesses most often, so that it is cached; yes, we all know that Windows itself can cache, but it caches the files themselves, and the utility caches blocks; if you're interested, for the cache I used the PrimoCache utility, what's what, how to use it, I wrote about all this;

Now let's talk about why the hard drive breaks down, common reasons for this unpleasant phenomenon are:

• it breaks mainly due to shaking, vibration, shock; Once you remove the hard drive slightly, it will most likely be covered with a copper basin or, at best, the sectors on it will begin to die; such a disk will be semi-working, a lot of information on it is unlikely to be available; well, the disk itself, if it works after an impact, it is extremely slow and difficult, in general it is living out its time, so to speak;
• also, the hard drive can easily fail due to a low-quality power supply; Hard drives are very critical to power supply, it must be stable and of high quality, any interruptions and interference are very undesirable;
• high temperatures also wear out the disk and especially affect the reading or writing process; disks with temperatures above 50 degrees may be unstable; normal temperature, it is not higher than 40, it is best when it is around 30-35 degrees;
• sudden power outages, that is, if the disk was working and then the power went out, this can provoke the appearance of unreadable sectors (that is, bad sectors); this is when the disk performed some kind of file operation, I was recording something and at that time the electricity went out, as a result the disk was UNDERWRITTEN and such a sector will already be marked as non-working; therefore, if you often turn off the computer from the socket, then you yourself understand how dangerous this is for the disk itself;
• It also happens that the disks are simply defective, this happens, then you need to immediately contact service center; it’s easy to understand that the disk is defective, so you bought the disk, it’s new, but it works noticeably strangely, so much so that it can be called unnatural; Well, for example, you bought a disk, its temperature at rest is 45 degrees Celsius, the recording speed is 30 MB/s, Windows takes about three minutes to load, such a disk must be immediately taken under warranty to a store or service center;

That's all, I hope that I informed you a little about hard drives, about why they make noise, why they break. I hope everything was clear. Good luck to you and good mood

When extraneous sounds start coming from the computer, it is always alarming. It is especially unpleasant when the laptop hard drive begins to creak or crackle. The noise mainly appears when the hard drive is under heavy load - copying large files or running applications that frequently access the hard drive. Let's try to figure out the reasons for the appearance of extraneous noise and ways to deal with them.

If the hard drive used to work quietly, and the creaking appeared relatively recently, the first thing it is advisable to do is copy important data to the cloud or to another medium. Next, you will need to check the integrity of the hard drive surface using or other specialized programs, which can find and fix bad sectors on the disk.

If during testing many problem sectors were found, you should think about changing the hard drive.

The creaking has been present since I bought the laptop.

A hard drive is a mechanical device that contains moving parts - disks, heads, etc. Accordingly, you can try to reduce its noise using additional sound insulation, which is not always good, since free space in a laptop case is limited. Another way to eliminate hard drive noise is to reduce the speed of head positioning (which is the source of the squeak). To do this, you need to get to the AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) hard drive system setting. You can do this using special utilities, two of which we will consider below.

quietHDD

The settings are completed, save the changes. In order to ensure that every time you start operating system do not forget to complete the setup steps, add quietHDD to .

WinAMM

A similar utility for controlling the acoustics of a hard drive is WinAMM. It also does not require installation and displays a small warning when launched. We agree with him, click “Continue”.

To return to initial settings"Loud" button.

Many users have noticed noise while working at the computer. It can be created by either a cooler, a video card, or a hard drive. However, the noise from the hard drive is different from other sounds that come from the system unit or the bottom of the laptop. The noise of the hard drive is more like a crackling sound. It appears when you copy large files or play a game. If your PC previously worked stably and there were no extraneous noises, but now your hard drive is cracking, you should copy the entire important information and check.

Getting rid of hard drive crackling

If your hard drive is cracking, there are two ways to fix this problem:

• Reduced speed of head positioning (as they crack);
• Reliable fixation of the hard drive inside the system unit.

Each hard drive has an option such as Automatic Acoustic Management. It is responsible for the rotation speed of the magnetic heads of the hard drive. It is impossible to change its parameters and reduce the speed of data reading using normal settings. Required special program. You can find many of these on the Internet. QuietHDD software is popular. However, it is worth warning that by reducing the speed of rotation of the heads, the speed of reading information decreases. The disk starts to work slower. This is a negative factor. Here you have to choose: speed or a working hard drive.

We remove hard drive crackling using quietHDD in the following way. Download and run the utility as Administrator.

Open the “AAM Settings” tab. Move the sliders to the minimum position, reduce from 256 to 128 revolutions. Then click “Accept” and “Ok”.

So that every time before you start using programs and applications, you do not have to launch this utility, it is worth adding it to the system startup.

If you are the owner of a PC and not a laptop, the hard drive must be securely secured in the system unit. You can do this in three ways:

1. Fastening with bolts. Often the hard drive is secured with only two bolts, although there are more connectors. In the “sled” the disk “feels” freely and because of this it creates crackling and noise. It is worth stretching the device and securely securing the hard drive to all the bolts.

1. Use of gaskets. Soft rubberized pads dampen noise and vibration. You can buy them or cut them yourself and install them at the point where the disk comes into contact with the system unit. However, the material should not be too large so as to interfere with the ventilation of the disc.

1. Mounting using twisted pair. Typically, 3-4 small pieces of wire are used for this purpose and secured as if the disk were located in a slide. However, in this case it will be difficult to move the body. There is a risk of damaging the device.

Using the above methods, you can fix the hard drive so that it does not create noise or crack.

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A hard drive is a magnetic storage device for our computer. Some experienced users copy important information to other media. If you hear suspicious extraneous sounds from your computer, this is a noisy hard drive. This noise is different from all the extraneous noise of the computer, you will recognize it immediately, it resembles a crackling sound.

It is necessary to take into account that some models of hard drives are noisy, so to speak, “from birth”.

If you bought the HDD with a bang initially, and you know for sure that it is working, then you have nothing to worry about.

This article will most likely be useful to those users whose screw has always worked silently, but then suddenly began to crackle. Typically, the noise gets worse in games and when working with energy-consuming applications.

Do not forget that any magnetic drive makes a little noise, since the hard drive consists of many elements that over time can become loose, damaged and fail.

So, if your hard drive is cracking, then you need to know that this is a very alarming symptom. If you do not take immediate measures, the HDD will soon collapse.

How to check that it is the hard drive that is making noise?

The fact is that most users, when extraneous noise The fault lies with the processor or video card. Few people think that a magnetic storage device can crack a lot.

1. Turn off your computer for safety reasons.
2. Unscrew and remove the cover of the system unit.
3. Now turn on the computer and watch its insides, listen to how the magnetic disks on the drive rotate, and you will hear the source of the crackling noise.

Why is the hard drive noisy?

There are only two reasons for this phenomenon:

• Magnetic disks rotate loudly.
• The block with heads hits the travel stop.

What can you do on your own when your hard drive is cracking?

In principle, you can look for another place in the computer case to place the HDD, the main thing is that it is reliable and well ventilated. The main purpose of this method is to prevent contact between the system unit case and the hard drive. If you were able to figure out the places of contact, you can attach insulating tape to the body in these places.

The main thing is that the drive is mounted in a suspended state as securely as possible, and you will know for sure that it will not fall.

The disadvantage of this type of mounting is that it is better not to move the system unit after this, so as not to cause mechanical damage to the disk. This option is suitable for small, cheap system units made of thin material.

If your hard drive is noisy, you can try reducing the speed of the magnetic heads. True, the speed of the propeller itself will also decrease, but the unpleasant noise will not bother you. They reduce the speed of the heads using special utilities that automatically control hard drive noise (AAM). The AAM program automatically detects the drive model, suggests the head rotation speed, and makes settings for the slow operation mode.

Download the utility from the official website, open it and use the menu to set the recommended head speed.

However, not all drive models support this program.

Using another Victoria utility, you can test the hard drive. The program marks problematic blocks in order to block their operation.